When Richard Jones’s new production of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung was launched – out of sequence with The Valkyrie – last season, many felt shortchanged by the lack of scenic spectacle. Admittedly it wasn’t helped by Westminster City Council at the last minute banning the climactic ring of fire on safety grounds.
As though to compensate, in the curtain raiser to the tetralogy, The Rhinegold, designer Stewart Laing provides a feast for the eyes, with a shimmering curtain that serves as backdrop for all four scenes. It’s lit imaginatively by Adam Silverman to suggest the different locations of the bottom of the Rhine, a mountain top, subterranean Nibelheim and mountain top again. And in the final scene, after Donner’s storm has swept the sky clean, Froh generates, if not a rainbow bridge, then certainly a spectacular display of technicolour glitter. Laing’s costumes, best described as eclectic, look, however, as if they belong to several different productions.
This last scene is in fact the most inventive. I loved the entry of the earth goddess Erda, roused from her sleep in pink pyjama suit, accompanied by a gaggle of schoolgirls, her daughters the Norns. We don’t usually see them in Rhinegold, but they’re mentioned by Erda, so why not?
I’m also happy with the anthropomorphising of natural elements continued from The Valkyrie, the harmony of humanity and nature being consonant with Wagner’s world-view: the gold in the Rhine is a manikin manipulated by puppeteers, for example. I would have had no problem with the river represented by shadowy figures, but probably wasn’t alone in being irritated by their running in circles.
Boldest of all, before a note is sounded there’s a quirkily imaginative little pantomime recalling Wotan’s ruinous hewing of a bough from the World Ash Tree. And the Valhalla to which these oligarchical gods retreat at the end resembles a concrete bunker.
There’s singing of considerable promise from Leigh Melrose as a psychopathic Alberich, Frederick Ballentine as an artful Loge, John Findon (Mime), Blake Denson (Donner) and Julian Hubbard (Froh). On this occasion, Christine Rice didn’t quite realise her full potential as Erda and some of the other singing was frankly disappointing. More work on diction and vocal characterisation needs to be done. John Relyea towered above all with his gorgeous, richly textured voice: the most impressive Wotan fielded by this company since Norman Bailey in the early 1970s.
Martyn Brabbins’ conducting was well-paced but all too often perfunctory. John Deathridge’s singing translation has some neat alliteration but his frequent lapse into demotic (‘bring it on’, ‘no way’, ‘gutted’) remains a matter of taste.
The best productions of Rhinegold teem with ideas and grip you from first to last. This one has some arresting inspirations but the blazing fusion of music and drama is only kindled in the closing stages. Hardly enough to worry Westminster City Council.
London Coliseum, to 10 March; eno.org
