Christopher Morley on the season ahead as the venue celebrates a milestone

Once all the Christmas and New Year jingle-jingles have been tidied safely into their box for another year, the 2012 classical music season begins in earnest with the biggest blockbuster imaginable: Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.

This Royal Opera House production of Wagner’s great comic masterpiece (though there is as much poignancy and tragic introspection as laughter in this near five-hour epic) comes to Symphony Hall on January 11, launching the great venue’s six-month-long 21st birthday celebrations.

Antonio Pappano conducts, and the cast includes Bryn Terfel as Hans Sachs (in which role he was unforgettable in Welsh National Opera’s recent production of the opera), Sir John Tomlinson as Veit Pogner, the guildsman who foolishly offers the hand of his daughter Eva as prize to the winner of a song competition, and Toby Spence as Sachs’ apprentice David.

The performance begins at 4.30pm, and is scheduled to run for 5 hours 30 minutes, including two intervals.

And this is just the first of several Wagnerian treats Symphony Hall audiences can look forward to in the next few months. On March 3 Andris Nelsons follows on from his triumphant Lohengrin of a couple of seasons ago with Tristan und Isolde.

Among the soloists joining the CBSO and its Men’s Chorus are Torsen Kerl as Tristan, and the Isolde of Lioba Braun. Christianne Stotjin sings Isolde’s confidante Brangane, and Matthew Best, probably the best exponent of the role I have ever heard, is King Marke (4pm, 5 hours 15 minutes with two intervals).

Good Friday (April 6) is the appropriate date for a performance of Wagner’s Holy Grail opera Parsifal, with the wonderful, consolatory Good Friday music at its heart, brought by soloists, chorus and orchestra of the Mariinsky Theatre St Petersburg, and their charismatic music director Valery Gergiev (4pm, running time 5 hours 45 minutes including two intervals).

Symphony Hall’s WagnerFest concludes on June 30 (also drawing the curtain on the 21st birthday bash) when Opera North brings the latest instalment of its semi-staged complete Ring cycle after its stunning Das Rheingold last year.

Now it is the turn of Die Walkure, the most human and heartbreaking of the tetralogy.

Richard Farnes conducts, and the cast includes Alwyn Mellor as Sieglinde, moving across from the wonderful Brunnhilde she is portraying in Longborough Festival Opera’s own ongoing Ring cycle (4.30pm, 5 hours 30 minutes, including two intervals).

But these are not the only operatic offerings at Symphony Hall during the first half of 2012, with the actual 21st anniversary of the official opening of the Hall by The Queen on June 12 being marked by an evening in which Bryn Terfel joins the CBSO and its Chorus in a selection of operatic arias and choruses including the closing scene from Act One of Puccini’s Tosca and the Toreador’s Song from Bizet’s Carmen. (7.30pm, repeated next evening).