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.
