Das Rheingold at Grange Park Opera

With Barrie Kosky’s ongoing Covent Garden production dominating metropolitan perceptions of Wagner’s tetralogy and Longborough Festival Opera having set a high bar for country house Wagner, it was brave of Grange Park Opera to embark on its own four-year Ring project. Some elements survive from Stephen Medcalf’s one-off take on Die Walküre with which Wasfi Kani’s miraculous, then new house dipped a toe in the water in 2017, more from the company’s Tristan und Isolde of 2023. The director is again Charles Edwards and many of the cast are returnees. The conductor is now Harry Sever, the rising star who assisted Anthony Negus at Longborough, his own approach suitably tight (after a slightly shaky start) but lacking the thunderous power the music demands at salient points. That ENO’s Orchestra (or perhaps two-thirds of it?) was available to occupy the more modest pit of a rival theatre is testament to the undermining of that great institution by the powers-that-be, a boon for the present company no doubt but still… GPO has always been a fiercely independent outfit and if compromises have to be made – there is at least one performance in the run that includes a long interval for insatiable picnickers – they are never primarily artistic.

The size of the theatre and its excellent acoustics mean that voices need not be forced. So is this perhaps Wagner as it ought to be heard? And seen? In his tweaks to the scenario Charles Edwards has no truck with Kosky’s fashionably ‘green’ agenda or anything else of that nature. There are post-Wagner-era mechanical constructs on display in an industrialized Nibelheim and much play with a fuse box or burglar alarm in Wotan’s well-appointed mansion but seemingly no subtext. In this ‘classic’ interpretation no particular concept or period dominates except that costumes are vaguely Victorian / Edwardian. The use of drapes, gauze screens, sleights of hand and puffs of smoke might seem positively antediluvian were these not combined with up-to-the-minute video projections and quite a few post-modern jokes. The descent into Nibelheim is accomplished via a sequence of flashing geometric shapes. Otherwise the images include unstartling planetary bodies and in-period architectural details. The direction seems primarily interested in character and humanity with nothing crucially undercut by stage business. I did tire of the plethora of paper – invoices? plans? artwork? Is Edwards perhaps signalling future frailties when, in Das Rheingold’s resplendent climax, these bourgeois gods process into the tympanum of their not quite finished Greek revivalist Valhalla via a builder’s ladder. A vestigial rainbow is suggested by the malfunctioning electrics. James Rutherford’s Wotan remains at the dining table, finally presented with the legendary Nothung sword in a sort of apocryphal teaser trailer for future episodes.

This is not a production animated by Loge’s fire – the director’s choice and no reflection on Mark Le Brocq’s splendid incarnation of this untethered ‘classless’ character. Perhaps hoping for a coup de théâtre to rival Kosky’s, Edwards has Sara Fulgoni’s eloquent Erda appear in the stalls and emote from there. Many of the singers must now count as GPO regulars. Even so Matthew Rose is luxury casting. Psychologically plausible as Fasolt, his enormous voice is wonderfully controlled. If the Fafner of David Shipley is less resplendent he compensates with a detailed and convincing characterisation. Christine Rice is a superb Fricka, vocally top-notch and never one-dimensional in reacting to decisions made in part to preserve her own lifestyle. Adrian Thompson turns in one in a lifetime of memorable cameos as Mime. That some of the lesser characters are closer to ciphers is the composer’s fault. Hard to discern any serious weaknesses in James Rutherford’s Wotan or David Stout’s Alberich. In short the show works well. And it goes without saying by now that the Theatre in the Woods is magical, always worth a return visit, the setting more intimate in character than comparable venues despite its closeness to London. Country-house opera loses some of its charm when the rains come. Hopefully they will hold off for the future performances scheduled on Friday 26 June, Sunday 5 July and Friday 10 July.