Jeffrey Tate conducted the first production of Wagner's Ring Cycle in Australia with the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra. He was immensely admired by all the participants especially for his musicality, his memory and his fantastic ear. He made the effort to remember every musician and singer's first name so that he could speak to them in his nice and friendly manner.

Rheingold's run time was in the order of two and three quarter hours non-stop. At the final dress rehearsal, about two thirds of the way through, I was one of the three bassoon players and I  missed a clef change and played one note incorrectly. It was just one note of many textures of the music going on at the time in the bassoon section but also in the orchestra as a whole. I quickly grabbed a pencil to mark the change of clef more obviously for next time and proceeded through the rest of the opera soon forgetting my little indiscretion. As we had to have dress rehearsals for all four operas in a row, it was over a week before we entered the pit for the first performance of Rheingold. When I sat down, I noticed a small note waiting for me on my stand. It was from Jeffery Tate.... Paul, could you please check bar 748 as there must be a mistake in the part!

- Paul Blackman