The Rhinegold review – witty and insightful, Jones’s production delivers an emphatic win for ENO

The unflattering garishness of the gods’s costuming underlines their lack of self-awareness: Blake Denson (Donner), Julian Hubbard (Froh), John Relyea (Wotan) and Madeleine Shaw (Freia) in Wagner’s The Rhinegold. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

There is an awful lot riding on English National Opera’s new production of Wagner’s Rhinegold. Still reeling from funding cuts, the company needs an emphatic theatrical winner to prove its artistic health and direction. Mostly this new Rhinegold – the Ring cycle’s opening opera – delivers that, and then some.

After the same team’s misfiring Valkyrie at the end of 2021, this was far from assured. Even now, the future of this Ring remains in the balance, with the next section, Siegfried, now postponed by ENO and the prestigious co-production with the New York Met appearing stillborn.