The 80's in Seattle

It wasn't until the 1980s that Seattle began to be generally recognized as an important performing arts locale. One of the key events in this respect was the Seattle Opera's ambitious and successful staging, under its founding general director Glynn Ross, of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Performed in its entirety every summer from 1975 through 1983 back-to-back cycles (first in German, then in English, by 1982, the New York Times reported that Seattle had become a serious rival to Bayreuth. Seattle's Wagner festival has continued to the present day, albeit no longer quite such an ambitious annual event