La Cieca it would be both fun and appropriate to get an early start celebrating one of this year’s two major 200th birthdays, that of Richard Wagner, and what better way to kick up our heels than with a parterre competition?

To celebrate the Meister’s anniversary, La Cieca invites you to create, in the comments section for this post, a “virtual festival” offering a complete cycle of Wagner’s 13 operas, music dramas and stage-consecrating festival plays. You should list major casting, conductor and stage director for each work.

You are invited to offer rationales for any or all of your choices, because you know if there’s anything La Cieca’s Blue Ribbon Panel loves, it’s rationales. The Panel will select the most fabulous Festspiele of them all, whose creator will receive Wagner: Complete Operas (Limited Edition), a 43-disc set from Deutsche Grammophon.

All entries must be date-stamped prior to midnight on Friday, January 11, and the decision of your doyenne’s panel is, as always, utterly final.