TULLY POTTER reviews Rheingold at the Royal Opera House

Here we go again… just five years after the tawdry Rheingold of Keith Warner last appeared, the prologue to Wagner’s Ring cycle has been delivered into the hands of that Aussie master of camp, Barrie Kosky.

Covent Garden seems incapable of rising to the challenge posed by the stature of Wagner’s music and his mythic imagination — and if your stage picture cannot measure up, what is the point?

Again and again, Kosky offers us footling theatrical ‘business’ in place of grandeur. 

Yes, there is humour in Rheingold, but if everything is reduced to the level of an evening with Dame Edna, the real humour gets lost. Loge the god of fire, irritating at the best of times, is infuriatingly giggly.

Wagner’s grandiose finale resembles Strictly Come Dancing, with glitter raining down. I’m still trying to work out the significance of having the gods in polo gear, with polo sticks flourished at crucial moments. 

The wig department seems to be on vacation. It’s all very well having a bald Alberich, chief of the Nibelungs, but when Wotan, king of the gods, is a dead ringer for Iain Duncan Smith, one loses faith in his divine powers.

Throughout the evening we’re blessed with a Symbolic Emaciated Naked Old Lady, who sometimes rotates on a sort of lazy Susan and at other times surveys the action like the spectre at the feast. She turns out to represent Erda, goddess of earthly wisdom. 

Rufus Didwiszus’s set is a variation on that old cliché, the massive log. Wotan’s spear is a weedy-looking branch. And, having watched molten gold being poured, I am unimpressed by the liquid on show here: a cross between vomit and school custard.

I enjoyed the Nibelungs, children with massive papier-mâché heads, but most of the costumes are inappropriate, such as Alberich’s suit and tie. 

Of the two giants, Fasolt looks believably like a builder but Fafner resembles a football manager, and they are not gigantic — they might have at least put lifts in their shoes.

The singing is good. Christopher Purves is a malevolent Alberich and IDS, er, I mean Christopher Maltman produces unexpected power as Wotan. 

Marina Prudenskaya is a fine Fricka, Sean Panikkar an excellent Loge when not tittering and Brenton Ryan a promising Mime. Wiebke Lehmkuhl, voice of Erda, has improved since 2018.

Antonio Pappano, too, has become a better Wagner conductor in the past five years. I am still not convinced by the sounds of the Nibelheim anvils but the orchestra plays well — a special bouquet for the horn section.