A concert performance of Wagner’s Das Rheingold is being given on Saturday night at Oxford Town Hall by the Orchestra of Oxford. This will be the first time the work has been heard in Oxford. The production will feature an international cast of singers from major opera houses, including Jeremy White (a house principal at Covent Garden) making his role debut as Wotan, Elisabeth Meister (next year's Royal Opera House Jette Parker Young Artist) as Woglinde and Wagner Society chairman Malcolm Rivers returning to the role of Alberich, which he has sung all over the world. Many of the principal singers have an Oxford connection, and the smaller roles will be sung by rising young professionals who have lived or studied in the area.

The 100-strong orchestra (which has already performed several major concerts of Romantic music to great acclaim, including a well-received Rachmaninov Symphony No 2 at the University Church last year) will be drawn from the best players from the city and the Oxrord University, and will be augmented by 18 anvil-players for the Descent to Nibelheim scene. James Longstaffe, a young Christ Church graduate who has received glowing reviews for productions of Rossini and Verdi operas in Oxford, will conduct.

Das Rheingold, described by Wagner as the “preliminary evening” of his ring cycle, is an epic tale drawn from Norse and Teutonic mythology. Spurned by the Rhinemaidens – water-nymphs entrusted with guarding the gold that lies at the bottom of the Rhine – the dwarf Alberich renounces love, steals the gold and forges from it an all-powerful ring. Meanwhile, in the kingdom of the gods, the giants, Fafner and Fasolt, have just completed the construction of Valhalla, and are demanding payment from Wotan, king of the gods, in the form of his sister-in-law, Freia. Loge, god of fire and cunning, has promised to find Wotan a way out of the contract. He tells the giants of the gold, and they agree to accept it as payment.

Box office telephone: 07717 003332 (www.www.orchestraofoxford.com)