The big hook for the Metropolitan Opera’s 2011-12 season has been, and is still, with one performance remaining, the new staging of Wagner’s entire Ring des Nibelungen cycle, the first in two decades. This staging has been an all-stops-out affair, and the Met’s got a lot riding on it; their own promotional materials claim that “this is the most ambitious production the Met has ever attempted.” The production has not gone off without its share of problems, of course; nothing of this size ever does. It happens. What is fairly unique, here, though, is that Met general manager Peter Gelb apparently took enough umbrage with something that a blogger for WQXR, New York’s flagship classical station, wrote last month about the Ring that he spoke directly to QXR’s top executive about it, and now that blog’s been removed from the radio station’s website. (FULL ARTICLE: Daniel J. Wakin, The New York Times)