Diary of a Culture Hedonist

Stuart Skelton (Siegmund) and Ruxandra Donose (Sieglinde) made a good match in the first act, while Stephen Milling made a superb and dark Hunding. In the absence of staging, the orchestral colours shone through and it was a delight to hear it all. Svetlana Sozdateleva's Brünnhilde as firm, nuanced and had the emotional breadth to be convincingly half-god / half-human. Markus Marquardt's Wotan, sadly, was too subdue and introspective for my liking (I didn't see Das Rheingold, but I have heard stories of a certain bass-baritone staring at the score in performance).  I wonder whether we will get yet another Wotan / Wanderer in Siegfried later in the cycle. This must be part of Vladimir Jurowski's preparation of his Ring cycles at future opera houses (Munich? Bayreuth?). Having checked with a few friends, we thought the LPO has not played the complete Ring for at least a few decades. Perhaps that's why it sounded bright, fresh and exciting.

I was quite looking forward to seeing and hearing this seldom performed gem of a piece. Thank goodness Pappano was at the helm to deliver an almost symphonic sound world with the overture. That was the good bit. Why, oh why, we needed the composer to appear as a ghostly shadow to everything??? The duet between Gherman (Sergey Polyakov) and Lisa (Eva-Maria Westbroek) was lovingly sung, only to have a distracting composer loitering. The choreography and staging worked with the story line - except the ever present showy composer figure. If this production is to be revived, please DELETE the onstage composer!