Review: THE RHINEGOLD, London Coliseum

Wagner's The Ring Cycle is the video game boss of opera. It's big and muscly, you can't just dive right in off the bat: they say you have to master your skills, see a couple of other operas first as practice. But armed with a fresh and scintillating translation, this is a Rhinegold that glimmers in full technicolour, a rainbow shining off the stage that everyone can and should see for themselves.

The first part of Wagner's four part Ring Cycle, The Rhinegold, sets the scene for an epic of love and death, sword wielding heroes and dastardly villains. In brief, the indignant dwarf Alberich steals gold from the Rhine and forges an all-powerful ring that catches the eye of Wotan, ruler of the gods, who hatches a plan to steal it for himself.

After an iffy start to Richard Jones' Ring Cycle at the ENO with last year's conceptually unbalanced The Valkyrie, his Rhinegold is anything but that. Everything is rendered with precision and clarity allowing Jones to garner a curiously economical extravagance. Opting for abstraction, Jones and designer Stewart Laing pinpoint particular ideas that become aesthetic icebergs insinuating a depth beneath the surface.

Take the way light shimmers off the cascading vinyl strips lined across the back of the stage, duplicating the sun's crystal rays bouncing off the flowing Rhine in the first scene. Painting such a large picture with a handful of finely tuned brush strokes is as theatrically mischievous as it is astonishing as it is mesmerisingly organic. Sure, it looks tacky at times with its luminous costumes, bendy props, and confetti showers, but it's all part and parcel of its iconoclastic playfulness.

For all the plastic lusciousness, its characters are firmly grounded and grubby. The Rhinegold may follow gods and monsters, but its humanity is omnipresent thanks to rollicking performances across the board and to Martyn Brabbins at the helm of a gorgeously fluid 89-strong orchestra.

John Relya's Wotan exudes a grit worthy of a mafia boss, swaggering with Tony Soprano-like bulk, clad in a double-breasted suit and slicked back hair. His vocals are crisp and booming but interwoven with a contemplative tension; you can hear the cogs turning in his head when confronted with the dilemma of relinquishing the all-powerful ring to return the captive Friea, the goddess of love. Paired with Frederick Ballentine's zestful Demi-God of fire Loge they make an odd, but charming couple. Leigh Melrose's Alberich sizzles with sadistic glee. What he lacks vocally he more than makes up for with wonderfully cartoonish physicality.

Characterisation bleeds organically through John Deathridge's new translation. His language is lyrical and brims with sassy wit, absorbing the onomatopoeic elements of Wagner's libretto, with crunchy alliteration accentuating warring personalities.

It's also very intelligently self-aware. In a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment Wotan calls Alberich a 'clutz' in a fit of irritation. It's a beautifully ironic Yiddish quip that to most it will be an innocuous insult; but here it feels like a cheeky backhanded jab at the moral nastiness that tarnishes Wagner's cultural legacy and just in the space of a split second. He would probably be rolling in his grave if he knew. What brilliance. What chutzpah.

The Rhinegold plays at the Coliseum until 10 March

Photo Credit: Marc Brenner

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