One Google search will confirm the accomplishments of the young Harry Sever, aged just 32. A swift journey through some of the world’s leading educational institutions: Oxford University, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Music, he now takes on opera’s most coveted project, Wagner’s Ring Cycle (Der Ring des Nibelungen) with Longborough Festival Opera. 

Sever speaks to me from one of the Longborough Festival Opera’s rehearsal rooms in Aldgate, East London. Midway through a busy schedule of rehearsals for Rheingold, he says ‘it’s a bit mad at the moment, so it’s nice to do something that’s not staring at a score!’. We go on to explore topics of psychology, politics, and friendship, all via Zoom. I start by asking him where it all began. 

‘Neither of my parents are musicians, I started playing the piano when I was a kid but my first real dive into music was singing in choirs and I was actually in an opera when I was about 12, despite not really knowing what an opera was back then.’  

'It’s so easy to be inspired by one another' - conductor Harry Sever

I ask Sever if he can cast his mind back and remember what his initial thoughts of the opera world were. Offering a wry smile, he responds ‘Well… I didn’t realise you had to turn up and know what all the words were. I was doing The Magic Flute at Glyndebourne, it was an incredible experience being in that environment; being surrounded by dancers, singers, orchestral musicians and choreographers really lit a spark in me.  

‘The conductor of that production really stood out to me,’ Sever beams. ‘An 82-year-old by the name of Sir Charles Mackerras. It took him a while to get up to the podium at that stage, but once he did he totally came alive, it was incredible to watch. I wrote to him after the show expressing my admiration and to my surprise he wrote straight back, inviting me to come and watch him rehearse. I look back on that experience now and see it as a real turning point for me. I feel so lucky at the stage I am at now, to be able to work in such a collaborative environment, being surrounded by costume designers, wig designers, dancers, it’s so easy to be inspired by one another; it’s a community that sometimes doesn’t exist in concert music and makes coming in to work a real joy.’ 

Sever is Longborough Festival Opera’s conducting fellow, the first of its kind in the opera company’s history. ‘The current conductor and music director, Anthony Negus has had assistants in the past, and Longborough created this Conducting Fellow role as a development of that, meaning I get more responsibility and opportunities to conduct. It’s very similar to a mentorship, and Anthony and I have become very good friends over the last couple of years.’ 

'We hear consonant harmony when anything to do with nature is brought up, and dissonance in a lot of the human behaviour.'

A couple of short masterclasses from Longborough’s YouTube channel confirm their cross-generational bond, the 32-year-old’s Wagnerian analysis pleasantly surprising Negus, 46 years his senior, at a number of points. ‘He feels like a friend of my age’, Sever says. ‘Maybe I’m an old soul and he’s a young soul, I don’t know, but we have a lot in common, including my previous piano teacher being a close friend of his from university.’ I ask Sever about the audition process for the position. ‘I’d written to Longborough the year before asking if I could come and observe some rehearsals, and they invited me to come and audition. It was quite a rigorous process with a panel of individuals from lots of different opera companies. I was asked to learn Act 1 of Siegfried, demonstrating my conducting ability as well as some singing and playing the piano.’  

He goes on to describe his day-to-day duties, ‘This summer I’m conducting a performance of Walküre, so I’m currently preparing for that. We’re doing so many shows at the same time, as well as orchestral rehearsals, so I’ve been conducting the revival rehearsals for Siegfried, Rheingold and Walküre, and in addition to that I’m busy rehearsing the cover cast. Once we’re in the theatre, my job is to listen for balance and give notes for singers - it’s very hands on.’ Sever mentions the amount of score there is to learn, 15 hours of music on average, depending on the conductor’s pacing.  

Harry Sever in rehearsals for Die Walküre at Longborough Festival Opera | Photo: Matthew Williams Ellis

We move on to the role the conductor plays in presenting Wagner's work. Some argue that the composer’s personal antisemitic opinions inevitably found their way into the text of The Ring. I ask Sever whether he feels any responsibility in handling an opera that could include antisemitic sentiment. ‘That’s a big question… It’s very clear that Wagner as a person was deeply problematic. He wrote unbelievably antisemitic non-fiction, separate to his stage works. Fundamentally, as an artist, I feel it’s important to take the work of art on its own terms. Of course, there is crossover between his political voice and his art, but I am more interested in the latter.’ 

Many of the nation’s operatic institutions have been threatened by recent budget cuts. I ask Sever why, when programming is under more scrutiny than ever, does The Ring Cycle continue to make an appearance? ‘I think the work has timeless appeal’, he says. ‘Much like a King Lear or the Bible, it touches on some very deep things. Audiences can come away from performances feeling completely different from one another depending on what stage they are at in their lives. For example, one could take the whole Cycle and look at it as one big political statement - is it a socialist take on power? What do the gods represent, is it a political system that needs to be burned to the ground? Or perhaps we can look at it from an environmental point of view; we hear consonant harmony when anything to do with nature is brought up, and dissonance in a lot of the human behaviour.’  

Sever steps away from his laptop to demonstrate on the piano behind him. He plays me a theme from Valhalla which represents the ideal of family life: beautiful and hymn-like, followed by The Ring motif, a foreboding and diminished variation. ‘First-time listeners probably won’t connect these two themes when they hear them, being two hours apart from one another, but I like to think they will recognise them subconsciously. 

‘This is why I think The Ring Cycle has remained so popular over the years, it gets you in the heart and in the soul, not necessarily in the brain. So often Wagner’s work is intellectualised, but to me it is so important that fundamentally The Ring, as a piece of theatre, is a feeling experience.’ 

The Longborough Ring 2024 begins on 16 June. More information can be found here.