Sherwin Sloan has attended more ring cycles than any other ringhead,
he believes.
(Photo by Susannah Snider)

They are the original Fellowship of the Ring and they are coming soon to a city near you.

Nicknamed Ringheads, Ringnuts, or Ring Pilgrims, these opera aficionados are classical music's version of Deadheads. Like their rocker counterparts, they travel far and wide to see their favorite musical act: Wagner's epic four-part opera event, the Ring cycle.

For the next year and a half, Ring Pilgrims will be flocking to Los Angeles. The L.A. Opera's 2010 Ring cycle will be the city's first. Right now, Angelenos are getting a taste of the new production: The company is separately showing the four operas that make up the Ring before performing them as a complete cycle next year.

The Ringhead ringleader is probably Los Angeles resident Sherwin Sloan. The retired eye surgeon has been to 87 cycles and plans to attend his 88th in April. "I think I've been to more Rings than anyone alive," Sloan said.

Sloan lives alone at the end of a winding road, directly underneath the Hollywood sign. His expansive house contains countless Ring posters, a massive CD collection, and busts of Wagner.  

Over breakfast, he explained how he discovered Wagner and why he can't stay away.

Sloan, it seems, was destined to witness great opera. The first opera he attended as a college student was the Chicago Lyric Opera's production of Bellini's Norma, starring the legendary Maria Callas. After one opera, he was hooked.

After discovering great Italian composers like Puccini and Verdi, Sloan stumbled across Wagner, a composer who reacted against traditional opera while drawing from its best qualities. "Not that I disliked Verdi or Puccini. I go to all of them, but Wagner became a real intense passion," Sloan said.

Wagner disliked how Mozart and Puccini incorporated brief pauses into their operas. These breaks were moments of plot development when the audience might chat, buy a glass of wine, or flip through the program.
 
"One of Wagner's complaints with other opera, including Mozart, was that there were moments of great beauty and great melodic warmth, but then there would be long breaksÂ…. What Wagner wanted was endless melody," said Bryan Simms, a musicologist at the University of Southern California.

In contrast, Wagner's operas are "Gesamkuntswerk," a German term meaning "complete work of art." His synthesis of music, poetry, and drama fills every moment of the opera with sublime beauty. There isn't a second that gives the listeners a break or allows them to look away.

This complete experience is one of the reasons Sloan can't get enough Wagner.

"There are several people who have said that Wagner is a hypnotist, that his music gets you so wound up emotionally and with the full drama that goes on that it's mesmerizing," Sloan said.

In an interview about Ringheads, UCLA musicologist Mitchell Morris said, "Wagner tends to be a sublime composer, and you need to listen to him sublimely. The payoff is a kind of a transcendental experience."

There is a religious aspect to Wagner's music, a freeing of the mind from the body. And Ringheads approach the cycle with a religious fervor.

Their annual pilgrimages to the Wagner's Bayreuth Festival in Germany, the memorization of texts and music, and the close-knit group of other worshipers make Ringheads strikingly similar to a religious sect.  

"There's been a quasi religious element in Wagner's theater. It's something that [Bayreuth] itself was designed to facilitate. The very structure of the building was designed to give you a kind of artistic, religious experience," Morris said.

More than 30 years after his first cycle, Sloan is the leading figure in the Los Angeles Ringhead community. He is the chairman of the Southern California's Wagner Society. He organizes educational activities and cast parties for the 250 members.

At a recent celebration for the L.A. Opera's production of Das Rheingold, Sloan transformed from solitary retiree to the life of the party. He flitted around the room with his cane, chatting with members of the cast, making speeches, and presenting awards.

Sloan revels in the company of his fellow Ringheads, whom he sees every time he goes to a Ring cycle. "Everywhere I go for a Ring, I see people that I know," Sloan said.

Although his Ringhead family supports his devotion to Wagner, Sloan remembers how his real family reacted to his passion.   

To prepare for his first Ring cycle in 1975, Sloan spent hours in his living room, listening to the Ring and following the score. He guesses he must have listened to the cycle 100 times before his family intervened.

"One night I was listening, and my two kids came downstairs from their rooms and they said, 'Dad, it's either the Ring or us,'" Sloan recalled. "I said, 'Get your suitcases; you're leaving.'"