UK Edition
Review
Opera North's Das Rheingold is uncomfortably authentic Wagner - review
No other British opera company in recent memory has been brave enough to stage six cycles of Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen, but that is Opera North's project this spring and summer. Even more remarkably, it is touring this Ring, taking it on a 10-week odyssey beyond its home base in Leeds to four cities including London.
This astonishing achievement is the result of success in recent years with its concert stagings of Wagner all conceived by Peter Mumford, and having built up the Ring instalments individually they are now being assembled as a swansong for the company's outgoing music director, Richard Farnes.
The orchestra is indeed central to the enterprise, as this Das Rheingold, first night of the first cycle, showed. Liberated from the pit, the orchestra is spotlit in more ways than one. First and foremost a lighting designer, Mumford illuminates the whole stage, but for instance in the Nibelheim scene the players are bathed in red to evoke the dwarves' smelting furnaces.
It may go against Wagner's ideal of a Gesamtkunstwerk - the total art work in which every element, scenery included, is equally important - but it is wonderful to hear and see Wagner's orchestration at work. Farnes's shaping of the score's details and longer paragraphs is masterly. This is authentic Wagner, right down to the discomfort of the seats in Leeds Town Hall.
In place of any scenery, three big square, black-framed screens are suspended behind the orchestra, and Mumford's design integrates video (watery images, mist-shrouded peaks, a primordial swamp and rainbow bridge) into the picture along with surtitles and other captions. The number three of course has significance in the Ring, beginning with the three Rhinemaidens from whom Alberich steals the gold at the outset.
In a strong and even cast, Jo Pohlheim's dark-toned Alberich registers powerfully. Yvonne Howard captures Fricka's steadfastness in her soft singing, and Giselle Allen's Freia has rich layers of Wagnerian colour in her voice. The giants are portrayed as nouveau riche industrialists with red pocket handkerchiefs - when the inarticulate Fafner (Mats Almgren) kills his brother Fasolt (James Cresswell), the handkerchief he rips out becomes a heart.
Michael Druiett makes a noble Wotan. Among several other fine performers, it is the Loge of Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke - fingers all flickering to convey his role as the fire god - who really stands out. Thanks to this truly expressive character tenor the part assumes central significance.
At Leeds Town Hall, then on tour to Nottingham, Salford, London and Gateshead, until July 10. www.operanorth.co.uk