<<  -- 3 --  Robert Anderson    DRAMATIC SKILL

Wagner's twelve-year holiday from The Ring was to our immense advantage in that it produced both Tristan and The Mastersingers. Whether it benefited The Ring itself is more questionable. In this production it has certainly left Andrea Bönig's Erda in an embarrassing tangle. It is as if the Norns have already given up the struggle to sort the skein of fate and thrown the whole thing on to the hapless Erda. But how gloriously the Wanderer tempts her to face another day with all its conundrums [watch -- 'Wache, Wala! Wala! Erwach!', DVD3 track 2, 0:00-1:24]. She is, however, too obviously cabin'd and confin'd to contemplate anything but sleep.

The final scene of Act 3, when Siegfried has worsted the Wanderer, and won through the flames to discover that Brünnhilde is not a man, is perhaps the most controversial in The Ring. I am most grateful to conductor and orchestra for letting the actual end bowl along sufficiently briskly to obviate what can be so often mere bombast. Meanwhile the Brünnhilde of Deborah Polaski negotiates with fine dramatic skill the lengthy transition from Valkyriedom to humanity. Wagner was of course self-indulgent to include music that was later to be part of the domestic Siegfried Idyll in honour of Cosima; but when it is sung as beautifully as here, one is humbly grateful [listen -- 'Ewig war ich, ewig bin ich', DVD3 track 14, 0:00-1:06].

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