COVENT GARDEN’S RAMSHACKLE RING IS
Der Ring Des Nibelungen (Royal Opera House)
Verdict: Not quite what the master wanted ★★★✩✩
FOR the start of the season. opera-goers have been emerging like Nibelungs from their underground lairs to descend in droves on the Royal Opera House — newly refurbished at enormous expense and shining like a facelifted prima donna.
Yes, Wagner’s epic cycle Der Ring Des Nibelungen is back, not looking at all as its creator envisaged and leaning heavily on one outstanding singer.
I think the Swedish soprano Nina Stemme (pictured) is the best Brünnhilde I have seen on stage.
Despite being unflatteringly costumed, she pours forth an unstinting stream of superb sound. She is a Frida Leider rather than a Flagstad or a Nilsson, thank goodness, and her responses to the drama are always human.
She brings Götterdämmerung to a close with her Immolation, sounding as fresh as when she first appears in Die Walküre.
Antonio Pappano paces the music well, achieving prodigious intensity, but I am amazed that a worldclass opera house cannot fit a full-sized orchestra into the pit. Having the drums in two stageside boxes disturbs the balance of Wagner’s carefully calibrated orchestration. Most of the playing is excellent, with terrific horn calls. Keith Warner’s production, for want of a better word, is played out against sets constructed from redundant BHS, B&Q and Poundworld shops, with furnishings scrounged from reclamation yards. A huge piece of hardboard with a door in it keeps popping up. I think I recognise the costumes from the Basildon, Billericay and Burstead Thespians’ dressing-up chest. Bereft of its mythic size, Rheingold becomes a series of petty squabbles. The Nibelheim
scene is silly and unpleasant. The scheming Loge is the Penguin from Batman to the life; Wotan in his braces looks like your neighbourhood plumber. The magical helmet resembles a Sixties light fitting. The one scene that is well done is Siegfried’s Rhine Journey.
Heavy-handed attempts at humour are footling. You get a piffling Ride Of The Valkyries, a risible Forging Scene in Siegfried involving a crashed plane and a saucepan, constant clashes between text and onstage action. The staging of all four great finales is botched. Warner piles a Pelion of irrelevance on an Ossa of twaddle.
The rest of the singing is variable. Act 1 of Die Walküre brings three fine voices in Stuart Skelton and Emily Magee as the incestuous lovers and Ain Anger as a black-voiced Hunding. Lise Davidsen (Freia, Ortlinde and Third Norn) is a Brünnhilde in embryo. Sarah Connolly (Fricka), Alan Oke (Loge), Karen Cargill (Waltraute), Brindley Sherratt (Fafner) and Gerhard Siegel (Mime) register strongly.
Stephen Milling is a chilling Hagen. Stefan Vinke as Siegfried — the young thug Wagner presents as a hero — is a typical German Heldentenor, his tone not always pleasant or on target, but serviceable.
John Lundgren as Wotan, well routined dramatically, has no low notes. Wiebke Lehmkuhl (Erda) lacks power. Heather Engebretson is an acrobatic but shrill Woodbird.
But do try to hear Stemme at the peak of her voice and artistry.