Yesterday, as you will be aware, was the fortieth anniversary of the creation of Radio 4. Tomorrow sees curtain up on the Royal Opera House’s first Ring Cycle in ten years. I imagine a sizeable proportion of the Wagner audience will be Radio 4 listeners. My advice to them tomorrow – advice that, I’ve realised, is widely applicable – is simple: pretend you are listening to the radio. Keep your eyes closed.

The Afternoon Play or the Classic Serial are – just like the rest of Radio 4’s output – designed to be aural experiences. The words and the voices feed the imagination, which creates the rest of the picture in the mind.

As a radio addict, Radios 3, 4 and 5 are on in my study more or less constantly during the day. It’s an addiction that is cheap and easy to sate. Another addiction, however – to Wagner’s music – is expensive and difficult to satisfy. I am prepared to spend large amounts of time and small fortunes getting my fix; next month I’ll be at the Sydney Opera House to see Tannhäuser.

But rare as it is to have a Ring Cycle performed on my doorstep, I’m giving the Royal Opera’s version a miss. I have no desire to waste the Pollard cash. The four operas have already been performed separately over the past two and a half years. I saw the first two, and the productions managed to be both banal and puerile.

Musically, however, the performances were first class. I saw the second opera in the cycle, Die Walküre, twice: once, fully staged, at Covent Garden; and once, a few weeks later, in a concert performance at the Proms. They had the same conductor, the same orchestra and more or less the same cast. One was six hours of dramatically dead tedium. The other was vibrant, gripping and one of the greatest musical experiences of my life. It was, of course, the supposedly inert concert performance that was sensational.

Don’t get me wrong. A good, staged production of any opera is usually far more involving than a concert performance, just as seeing a worthwhile interpretation of Shakespeare, or any other play, should knock the socks off a radio performance. But there are few things less congenial to a proper appreciation of drama, whether spoken or sung, than the misguided interpolation of second-rate direction.

When it comes to this week’s Ring Cycle, therefore, I’d much rather hear the real artists – the actors, the singers and the musicians – in concert. They’ll know that their communication with the audience’s imagination is direct, and that they can give their dramatic best without the interference of second-rate direction.

And since I can’t have that this week, I’ll stay home and listen to Radio 4.

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