Das Rheingold

Bayreuth festival, Germany ★★★☆☆

Who knew? Wagner’s Ring cycle isn’t a saga of gold, power and love. In fact, it is a tale of child abduction and dehumanisation. Or at least that is what Austrian director Valentin Schwarz seems to be arguing in the first part of this long-awaited new Ring cycle at the Bavarian festival.

There have been changes of director, delays caused by the pandemic and the conductor Pietari Inkinen pulled out because of Covid. The baton passed to the Stuttgart opera music director Cornelius Meister, who opened the Ring with a well-paced, fluent account of Das Rheingold, beautifully played by the Bayreuth festival orchestra.

In Schwarz’s concept-heavy production, Rheingold opens in a children’s paddling pool, from which Alberich, renouncing love for no obvious reason, seizes a young boy. It is a jolting moment, and the idea that the original sin that drives the Ring is in fact the abuse of children is a searing one. The larger question is whether it is an idea that can be sustained over the whole of the Ring without mangling what Wagner wrote. This Ring cycle could go either way. Martin Kettle

In repertory until 25 August