The Rhinegold review

English National Opera launched its current Ring with the second instalment of Wagner’s four-part epic, The Valkyrie, back in November 2021. Since then has come the bombshell announcement from Arts Council England regarding the company’s future, with ramifications that are still far from clear. As a result of this uncertainty, The Ring’s co-producer, New York’s Metropolitan Opera, pulled out. Presumably only Wagner’s all-knowing earth goddess Erda knows what will happen next.

Meanwhile, ENO has now moved on to the first instalment. Unsurprisingly, Richard Jones’ staging is on similar lines to its predecessor. Over several decades the director has given British companies some of their most rewarding productions, and there’s a lot about The Rhinegold that will make audiences think about the much-debated meaning of Wagner’s tetralogy set in a world of gods, giants, dwarves and dragons that, among other aims, clearly sets out to attack capitalism.

Jones and his team certainly get this element right but, as with The Valkyrie – and for those with longer memories, the Scottish Opera Ring that only reached the halfway point – his trademark comic-grotesque mode only takes you so far, undercutting the essential seriousness and mystery of Wagner’s conception. That said, and given that such moments of stage illusion as Alberich’s transformations and the dragon are almost always disappointing, the Nibelheim scene exemplifies a palpable sense of evil and the rainbow bridge is magical. The final image of the Rhine daughters desperately trying to break through the windows of Valhalla while Wotan draws down blind after blind to keep them out is Jones at his most brilliant. But a good deal of the rest doesn’t rise to this level.

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