Das Rheingold

This Ring cycle, from Stuttgart has different directors, casts and concepts for each of the four parts. Rheingold and Walkure are moderately successful whereas Walkure and Gotterdammerung are embarrassingly bad. Still, it is interesting to note that the recent BBC Radio 3 review of DVD versions of the Ring places this Stuttgart cycle a close second behind the 1980's Pierre Boulez version from Beyreuth

For this Rheingold, director Joachim Schlomer's big idea is to set the opera in the pump room of a 1930s spa. There is just this one set, with a large ornamental pool in the centre representing the Rhine. With the exception of Erda, most of the characters are on stage most of the time. Gods, giants and Niebelungs are all clients of the spa where the Rhinemaidens are the personal trainers.

The idea works reasonably well and I was impressed by the way Schlomer manages to maintain the metaphor throughout the production. But this is not the production to see if it is your first Rheingold because it misses the traditional magic There is no swimming at the bottom of the Rhine, there are no giants, no Niebelungs. Alberich just hisses a bit when he is supposed to have turned himself into a serpent and he drops a pathetic rubber frog in front of him when he is supposed to turn into a toad. I did like the tarnhelm, which is just a mirror held in front of Alberich's face, a sort of Magritte tarnhelm I suppose. All the roles are well sung, with Esa Ruuttunen's gangling Alberich outstanding, the tallest dwarf in Nibelheim. Overall, this production is too pleased with its own cleverness. Not only does it lack magic, it lacks humour, with a well-sung but humourless Loge from Robert Kunzli.

I have always loved and appreciated Wagner's music, and all four operas of Der Ring Des Nieblungen(or what I call The Ring Cycle) are hugely compelling with magnificent music. I actually wanted to like this Stuttgart performance, it was a clever and ambitious concept but sadly the whole performance came across as dull. I give it brownie points for the music, the excellent orchestral playing- the wind and brass especially- and conducting- if at times overly-bombastic- and the mostly very good sound(apart from an occasionally dead-sounding stage-left). And there are three performances of note, Esa Ruuttunen's sincere and suitably evil Alberich, the exciting Mime of Eberhard Francesco Lorenz and especially Mette Ejsing's warning and vocally rich Erda.

The rest of the performances are not as successful. The Rheinmaidens don't really have much to do other than lurking about. Wolfgang Probst is for me the least noble Wotan I've seen on DVD, and while his voice is powerful it doesn't have any control. Robert Kunzli is a well-sung but humourless Loge, Michaela Schuster's Fricka is overemphasized and the giants Fasolt and Fafner while sung with sonority particularly by Roland Bracht were not imposing or menacing at all. The set is not so bad in look, but it gets dull after a while and doesn't do much to enhance the action. The costumes are not much better, I found it incongruous personally to see the Rehinmaidens in slacks.

But what made the performance dull was the lack of any true dramatic impact. One or two parts worked, such as the Rheinmaidens' humiliation of Alberich and the wrestling of the Ring from Alberich, but they weren't enough. Loge eating golden apples actually didn't fit with what he was singing about, Fricka reading tearing pages out of a book undermines any sense of drama, Alberich turning into a frog was pathetic(not even the 2007 Valencia production was this amateurish) and Mime's running around would be more at home in somewhere like MASH. Even worse was how Alberich's curse was handled, not exactly the staging but more so the camera work, the constant switching back and forth from Alberich to Wotan proved to be very distracting.

All in all, sadly dull production of such a great opera. Go for the Barenboim Bayreuth or Levine Met for how it should be done. Even the Boulez-Chereau production of the early 80s, 2010 Met production and Mehta Valencia production were better than this one. 5/10 Bethany Cox