<<  -- 5 --  Robert Anderson    THE RING IN CHEMNITZ

Because of sickness and conflicting engagements there were three Wotans, The first from Hannover, the second from Mannheim, and the third from Düsseldorf. They could not conceivably, because of voice, manner and stature, be mistaken as the same person, but appropriately they increased in dignity from one work to the next. Siegfried's father Siegmund was the cool but effective Richard Berkeley-Steele, as English as his son. Finally Janice Baird as an American Brünnhilde was as far a cry as possible from the lumbering Brünnhildes of former days. She paced herself vocally with great skill, buoyant and confident at the outset in Die Walküre, with due solemnity for the 'Todesverkündigung', and saving much for a thrilling closing scene to Götterdämmerung.

Her scene with Waltraute demonstrated that in this production the ring was more like a handcuff, perhaps suitably so. Not for the first time in my Ring career, the last person on stage was Alberich. Wagner's music makes an emphatic denial to such an end, but history has a nasty way of denying even Wagner, whose Alberich must now supervise the merger of various outsize multinational companies and attend to globalization. Before he puts too many of us out of business, it is well worth flying from London's City Airport to Berlin and ambling on by train to Chemnitz. The Ring remains in repertoire, and Karl Marx will glower a welcome.