The challenge of mounting a new production of Wagner’s Ring that’s faithful to its mythic origins but which also speaks to our times is one that no opera house worth its salt wants to shirk. By entrusting its new cycle to the maverick Australian director Barrie Kosky, Covent Garden could be sure of securing a vibrantly theatrical presentation. And there’s enough ingenuity in the opening Rheingold to promise a rewarding experience as the cycle develops.
Kosky’s most striking invention is the incorporation of a shrivelled Earth Mother (played gamely by the octogenarian Rose Knox-Peebles) who is both the visual embodiment of Wotan’s initial crime against nature (back in the mists of antiquity he hacked off a branch of the World Ash Tree to serve as his world-ruling spear) and a witness to the ensuing ecological catastrophe.
