For four weeks box-office keepers at the San Francisco Opera House have been patiently explaining that there are no more seats available. For four weeks inside the house preparations have gone on at fever pitch. This week begins the most ambitious undertaking in San Francisco's opera history: the presentation of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, that mighty tetralogy which, 26 years in the making, includes the operas Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried, Gotterdammerung.
San Francisco has heard the complete Ring only twice before, once by Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera when it visited...