This is going to be a special summer for Cheadle Hulme-born opera singer Sue Bullock. Not only is she starring at the Last Night of the Proms this year, with its worldwide TV audience, before that she’s in the first ever ‘Comedy Prom'... which says a lot for her versatility.

And before that she’s singing in Manchester – taking the major role of Brünnhilde in Wagner’s Die Walküre, which the Hallé and Sir Mark Elder are performing as part of the Manchester International Festival.

They’re making a three-day event of it in fact, as a free introductory evening combines one part of the opera with a specially commissioned introduction to Wagner’s Ring Cycle (Die Walküre is just one of its four massive parts), called The Madness Of An Extraordinary Plan.

Written by Gerard McBurney, it’s a 50-minute dramatization of the background to the Ring Cycle, with complete excerpts and what Sir Mark Elder calls ‘quietly ruminative bits’ of music behind the spoken words.

“It’s about what was going on in the world at the time – Manchester even comes into it, as a sort of Nibelheim,” he adds. (Nibelheim in the Ring is a dark underworld where dwarfish beings labour to mount up gold, so you can see the parallel with our 19th century forebears).

But Sue Bullock is a modern Mancunian – and she’s a world specialist in singing Wagner – she’s taken the role of Brünnhilde at Covent Garden, Vienna, Venice, Lisbon and Tokyo. She’s also known for Isolde, another massive Wagner role, and Elektra, a woman going over the edge into madness, in Richard Strauss’s opera of the same name.

To combine work like that with a comedy night and the flag-waving Last Night of the Proms shows a fantastic range of ability, I suggest. “Either that or total craziness,” she adds, down-to-earth as always.

Brünnhilde is a challenge, she says – not just in terms of stamina, but to portray a woman who begins as the wayward daughter of Wotan, the king of the gods, and ends by sacrificing herself for the sake of a new world order (this ‘Immolation Scene’ from Götterdämmerung is her showpiece in the Last Night concert).

“You can’t show at the beginning of the story that you know how it’s going to end,” she says. “But it’s perfectly written, and so rewarding to sing.”

She’s worked with Sir Mark Elder often – he was music director at English National Opera when she began her career, and she’s sung Elektra with him and the Berlin Philharmonic.

“We’ve been having chats about how to handle parts of the role,” she says.

“He’s very good in that way, and it always makes the first rehearsal much easier.”

But meticulous preparation is the last thing she expects for the Comedy Prom (August 12,    and on BBC 2 on Aug 27). “Tim Minchin and Kit and the Widow float with the wind a bit more than us opera singers – it’ll be a great experience and I think I’ve got to be prepared for anything.”

Then there’s the patriotic Last Night, on September 10. “I’ve often wondered what it feels like to go out there and see all those people. I’ve done the Proms before, but the Last Night is different,” says Sue.

“In the second half I’ll be leading massed singing, including Climb Every Mountain and You’ll Never Walk Alone – as well as Rule, Britannia! I don’t often sing that sort of number these days, though I used to, on Friday Night Is Music Night. But I love show songs.

“The hardest bit was to keep stumm about the invitation for months – and it’s something I’ve always watched from being a little girl.

“But what everyone asks me now is ‘What are you going to wear?’ If I had a pound for every time that’s been said, I’d be a rich lady! I just hope I don’t cry.”

» The Madness Of An Extraordinary Plan and Act Three of Die Walküre: Bridgewater Hall, tonight, 7.30pm. The Madness Of An Extraordinary Plan and Act One of Die Walküre: tomorrow, 7.30pm. Acts Two and Three of Die Walküre: Saturday, July 16, 3.30pm. Tickets from £15.

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