Wagner
Das Rheingold – preliminary evening of the stage-festival-play Der Ring des Nibelungen; music drama in four scenes to a libretto by the composer [concert performance; sung in German]
Wotan – Iain Paterson
Loge – Stephan Rügamer
Donner – Jan Buchwald
Froh – Marius Vlad
Fricka – Ekaterina Gubanova
Freia – Anna Samuil
Erda – Anna Larsson
Alberich – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Mime – Peter Bronder
Fasolt – Stephen Milling
Fafner – Eric Halfvarson
Woglinde – Aga Mikolaj
Wellgunde – Maria Gortsevskaya
Flosshilde – Anna Lapkovskaja
Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim
Justin Way – Stage director
Reviewed by: Kevin Rogers
Reviewed: 22 July, 2013
Venue: Royal Albert Hall, London
A couple of significant ‘firsts’ for this pre-First Day (preliminary evening, Das Rheingold) of Richard Wagner’s mammoth operatic tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen, the biggest and greatest work of Western Civilisation: the first Ring Cycle in a single Proms season, and Daniel Barenboim conducting his first Wagner opera in the UK. What a democratic music festival the Proms is: where else can one hear a Ring cycle for as little as £20?
Barenboim’s Ring is a known quantity (Teldec, from the 1991 Bayreuth Festival), noted for its meticulous detail, driving power and magisterial approach. And, whilst he offered little in the way of further revelation on this occasion, this was, nevertheless, a thrilling performance, one in which the world of Gods, Giants, Rhinemaidens and Nibelungs was each painted vividly into the mind’s eye. And so the long E flat arpeggio, which wound its way from gentleness to a surging beating heart of the Rhine, captivated instantly. Characterisation, too, from the glorious Staatskapelle Berlin (Barenboim has been its Staatskapellmeister since 1992) was to the fore: Fafner and Fasolt’s entry was proud and determined, with brass blaring appropriately. The descent into Nibelheim was quite terrifying, the rhythms pounded out. Elsewhere, the soundscape was one of expectation for something better (as Wotan would hope it to be): the opening of scene 2, with the waters of the Rhine dissolving to give a view of open space, and Valhalla was full of light, and to close utterly triumphant as the Gods walk across the bridge to take up residence. Stripped of the baggage of a production and the travesties often inflicted upon Wagner, to hear the music without distraction was a revelation, the orchestra playing with common purpose, giving us fully the drama of Wagner’s music.