Maureen Wheeler, who co-founded the Lonely Planet series of travel guides with her husband Tony, has announced that she will be donating $5m AUD to Australian Opera. This will cover one third of the budget of the Ring cycle the company is planning for Melbourne in 2013.

The donation is the largest in the company's history, and has apparently been prompted by a desire by the Wheelers to increase the visibility of the arts in their adopted home city. Maureen Wheeler said of the Ring cycle ''You have to stage it to fully claim the title as a significant cultural centre."

The production will feature English soprano Susan Bullock as Brünnhilde, Finnish bass-baritone Juha Uusitalo as Wotan and American tenor Gary Lehman as Siegfried, but most of the other parts will be taken by Australian singers. It will also be directed and conducted by Australians, Neil Armfield and Richard Mills respectively.

Performances of the Ring cycle have recently become significant events in the long-running cultural competition between Australia's state capitals. The Melbourne production follows a successful Ring cycle by the State Opera of South Australia in Adelaide in 2004. Competition with Sydney has also formed a subtext to the announcements about the production. Peter Batchelor, Victoria's Arts Minister, described the State Theatre in Melbourne as Australia's finest opera venue, a clear dig at Sydney's beleaguered Opera House. Melbourne's leading broadsheet, The Age, went further saying "Shortcomings in the Opera House theatre and the lack of alternatives mean it [the Ring cycle production] will never be performed in Sydney."