It has been revealed that the JRR Tolkien Estate has granted permission for the creation of an operatic setting of the author’s landmark Lord of the Rings trilogy.

According to theonering.net, the estate will allow UK composer Paul Corfield Godfrey to expand on his operas of stories from The Silmarillion, works he has been composing and recording since the 1960s and completed in 2023 with the issue of a 10-CD series of recordings from Volante Opera and Prima Facie Records.

A statement released by Volante Opera read:

“Following on from the success of the recordings of The Silmarillion, Paul was persuaded to go back to these beginnings and fully explore, expand and complete the work which has now evolved as ‘musical chapters from The Lord of the Rings’. This fully operatic setting has now become a companion work on the same scale as The Silmarillion. This adaptation takes place over thirty ‘chapters’ designed to be performed over six evenings – over 15 hours of music.”

This work is currently in the process of recording by Volante Opera and it is anticipated that Prima Facie will release a demo recording of the complete cycle, in the same manner as their Silmarillion recordings, in 2025.

The professional singers, some 30 in number, come mainly from Welsh National Opera and include: Simon Crosby Buttle (Frodo), Julian Boyce (Sam), Philip Lloyd-Evans (Gandalf), Stephen Wells (Aragorn) and Michael Clifton-Thompson as Gollum.