Dead forest, barren rock, dry stone, no water. This waste land vision dominates Das Rheingold, the first part of Wagner’s Ring cycle at the Royal Opera House, conducted by Antonio Pappano in a new staging by Barrie Kosky. As double basses, bassoons, horns gurgle from the aural depths, depicting new life, we see only death. Nothing is that simple. Rheingold signals the damnation of the gods, and teems with incident: the world ash tree, gold, Rhinemaidens, a one-eyed Wotan, slavish Nibelungs, giants, a rainbow bridge. Kosky, the Berlin-based Australian director, yokes us to his bidding – imaginative, intelligible, at times violent, with no letup. Musically outstanding, dramatically potent, this Rheingold holds high hopes for the entire cycle: the greatest artistic investment an opera house makes.
Drawing parallels between ecological disaster and the Ring is now a given. How you handle it is not. Erda, depicted in all her naked frailty (performed by Rose Knox-Peebles; sung, radiantly and offstage, by Wiebke Lehmkuhl), is ever present. The message is clear. The Earth is still beautiful, but finite, sucked nearly dry by humanity’s greed. In the gaseous depths of Nibelheim, Erda is attached to pipes and hydraulic pump. From her very essence the final dregs of oil-like gold drip from cavernous boreholes, viscous and shining. Alberich, played with superb venom by Christopher Purves, licks the sticky liquid from his fingers as if savouring the last scrapings of hot toffee.
