Grange Park Opera’s sparky Das Rheingold augurs well for its forthcoming Ring cycle

Charlie Edwards’s often witty and sparky production (with late-Victorian costumes by Gabrielle Dalton) impressed and had plenty to interest, but also to distract. The waters and rocks (the Lorelei?) of the Rhine were projected onto a screen, with the Rhinemaidens appearing on stepladders. They emerged in front of the screen to entertain Alberich, not without adult humour. The Rhinegold itself was a luminous (electric?) cable extracted from a golden orb. The ‘wonniger Höh’ (joyful heights) where the Gods live, before Valhalla is completed, is placed into a white Victorian mansion, with a view onto Valhalla in the shape of a Greek temple. The giants are depicted as carpenters and electricians, Fafner tinkers distractingly with the fuse box just a mite too often.

Nibelheim had the most scenic interest. Mime was caged until released by Wotan and Loge; Nibelheim itself was represented as a dark control room in a power station, showing the electric current in Nibelheim, Riesenheim and ultimately ‘Die Götter’. There were no armies of screeching Nibelungs in this production, so Mime did the heavy lifting on his own. The dragon and the toad were depicted in 2D on the screen, neither frightening nor amusing, but it worked; less impressive though was shining a blinding spotlight on the entire audience – were we the terrified Nibelungs? The anvils – played by three offstage percussionists – were loud, as it should be. The final rainbow was cleverly produced with the aid of lighting; here the modesty of the budget became noticeable. There was a splendid coup de théâtre – Erda appeared at the side of the Stalls and proceeds to deliver her aria (‘Weiche, Wotan, weiche’) whilst moving across the Stalls, turning to the stage and to the back of the Stalls. I had spotted the singer before the opera started, moving around in front of the audience, mingling with them and muttering indistinctly. Incidentally, Grange Park Opera copies the Bayreuth tradition of having a small number of brass players play a theme from the opera in front of theatre (but why don’t they use what looks like an upper balcony?) instead of warning bells.

On to the singers. There are some fairly big names in the cast. James Rutherford is a seasoned Wagner singer with a rich and voluminous bass-baritone; he won the Seattle Opera International Wagner Competition in 2006 and since then there are not many Wagner leading roles he has not sung, all over the world, in top opera houses. It was good to see and hear him on the outskirts of Leatherhead. Christine Rice is another highly regarded singer, and she excelled as Fricka, imperious and forthright. Rachel Nicholls, as Freia, does not have that much to sing and made little impression (except that her dress made her look dubiously young); I see she is down to sing Brünnhilde in the rest of the Ring, so we shall have to wait and see. Donner and Froh were both wonderful – Thomas Isherwood and James Schouten firm and secure of voice. Schouten had impressed me greatly at Regents Opera in Salome.

David Stout as Alberich started uneasily, I thought his scene with the Rhinemaidens was below par with his diction particualrly indistinct. He grew in stature as the evening progressed, and indeed his diction became clearer and, if still not idiomatic, his curse was properly chilling. I was, however, most surprised that he garnered the top (last) spot at the curtain call; that should surely go to Wotan who is on the stage most of the time. Adrian Thompson as Mime was a firmer tenor than many a Mime, acting skills first-rate, the top of his range not always spot on. He was gleeful when his brother got tied up.

I always think in Rheingold that the wrong giant gets killed. Get rid of the one who doesn’t sing so beautifully. To be fair, it is Fasolt who gets all the best tunes, not the ‘devil’ Fafner. Fasolt was sung by international star bass-baritone Matthew Rose who was just simply glorious. He looked cuddly too in his brown suit, and I wasn’t surprised that Freia appeared greatly taken by him, willing perhaps to forget those golden apples after all? Rose also sings Philip II in Grange Park’s Don Carlo, quite a feat. David Shipley as Fafner sounded croaky throughout: hay fever or a cold perhaps – what one heard of his black bass was fine though.

Loge often steals the show in Rheingold for his acting; here too, in splendid costume and coiffure, Mark Le Brocq sang well, whilst scribbling notes on the proceedings in his little red book. Erda, who made an impression both before the opera started and during it (as explained above) was clear of diction; I must admit I prefer a warmer, richer voice than Sara Fulgoni commands for this role. She is supposed to be the Goddess of Eternal Wisdom and the voice needs maturity and gravitas.

Three Rhinemaidens, three quite different voices: the best of them was Irish soprano Ailish Tynan as Woglinde; she was Cardiff Singer of the World (Recital Song Prize) back in 2003. Her star has risen since then and she is in demand internationally. Her sparkling soprano shone through the murk of the Rhine. Olivia Rose Tringham (Wellgunde) sang well, even though she was overshadowed by Tynan. British mezzo-soprano Charlotte Bateman (Flosshilde) is still young and possibly a star of the future though not quite yet: she was completely underpowered next to Tynan and Tringham.

It was heart-warming to hear the orchestra of English National Opera down South, and they were in top form. The sweltering heat may have explained the very first brass raspberry but after that they excelled and thrilled throughout. Much of the credit for that must go to young conductor Harry Sever. Sever, currently Music Director of the Cambridge Philharmonic, was Conducting Fellow at the Longborough Festival Opera where he was personally tutored by the renowned British Wagnerian conductor Anthony Negus who was spotted at this performance. Sever also has an ongoing relationship with English National Opera. He will return to Grange Park for Die Walküre, and then – one imagines – the rest of the Ring. Severs could do no wrong and from the very opening bars, as the waters of the Rhine began to flow, we sensed we were in good hands; Severs had the architecture of the work, its climaxes and beauties, under his complete control, and I am sure we will be hearing much more from him in the future.

I already look forward to Walküre next summer.; Wagner lovers should not miss it. I just hope it won’t be quite as hot.

John Rhodes | 27/06/2026

An Impressive Ring Cycle Opener from Grange Park Opera’s Das Rheingold

It takes some nerve to initiate a Ring cycle in a country house setting with relatively modest resources in comparison to the major opera companies. But this is Wasfi Kani who is surely following the model set by Longborough Festival’s two complete Ring cycles achieved within the last 20 years. Now, she has recently launched Grange Park Opera’s Wagnerian epic, its four music dramas due for completion in 2029. And for this first instalment of family greed and corrosive power she has secured a terrific all British cast and the Orchestra of English National Opera – well most of it anyway. And at the helm of these London players is Harry Sever whose Wagnerian credentials include collaborating with Anthony Negus who has built Longborough’s reputation as the Bayreuth of the Cotswolds.

The opera house at West Horsley Place may not yet be known as Surrey’s Bayreuth, but if this performance is anything to go, queues will be forming across the fields when the entire cycle is mounted in 2030. Undoubtedly, this Rheingold is in safe hands and enjoys some insightful direction by Charlie Edwards supported by handsome costumes from Gabrielle Dalton whose expensively dressed cream-coloured Gods and dusty, bowler-hatted giants neatly delineate social distinctions within a late Victorian or Edwardian era. Meanwhile, her check-trousered Alberich could belong to 19th century Music Hall. Edwards is also responsible for the imaginative designs suggesting Wagner’s mythological realm. Behind a gauze curtain Rhinemaidens frolic, video projections convey Alberich’s transformation from dwarf to dragon and toad, while flickering geometric patterns neatly cover the scene change from Wotan’s stylishly furnished home down to the underworld that is Nibelheim. Its industrial grime is redolent of a Dickensian iron works that could come straight out of Hard Times. There’s no marble staircase to reach Valhalla, merely a builder’s stepladder left by the giants. If there’s any slight miss-step, it’s the intermittent, yet overdone playing with a dodgy fuse box, though its tampering does eventually make sense when a neon lit ‘rainbow bridge’ brings a palette chart of colour.

Designs and costumes aside, what separates this Rheingold from Barrie Kosky’s ecological slant at Covent Garden or Calixto Bieito’s futuristic interpretation at Opéra Bastille is the emphasis on class and family seen through the lens of an emerging nouveau riche. And what a dysfunctional family Wotan’s clan is. In this respect there’s a thought-provoking directorial intervention when Rachel Nicholls’s finely portrayed Freia (feisty and compliant) eventually becomes a willing hostage of the giants, huddling in the arms of Matthew Rose’s rich-toned Fasolt, and bringing echoes of the Stockholm syndrome. And with a mother such as Fricka (gloriously sung by Christine Rice) who is more interested in balancing her accounts for the Giant’s building work than protecting her sister, it’s little wonder Freia has found some comfort with her abductor.

There’s nothing disturbing there, unlike Alberich’s abuse of his dishevelled minion Mime (Adrian Thompson in fine fettle) who shocks him with an electric current whilst trapped in a metal cage. While the resultant screams remove all our earlier sympathy for Alberich, there’s plenty for Mime who later gets his come-uppance and chuckles to himself as he transfers Alberich’s horde of gold to the giants. As the wily Loge, Mark Le Brocq, brings something of his Longborough Festival characterisation with a twitching hand, but his ease of movement and vocal projection is perfectly poised, especially convincing in his ambivalence of a demi-God. Equally reliable is James Rutherford’s Wotan, his warm baritone carrying effortlessly across the stage, as does his portrayal of a man whose destiny he still hopes to control. Amongst the remaining cast, David Shipley persuades as the murdering Fafner; Thomas Isherwood and James Schouten make an impact as the brothers Donner and Froh, while Sara Fulgoni as the Earth goddess Erda impresses as she emerges from the stalls in a coup de théâtre. Ailish Tynan, Olivia Rose Tringham and Charlotte Bateman make a winsome trio of Rhinemaidens. But if anyone left a lasting impression it was David Stout’s shape-shifting Alberich.

In the pit Harry Sever controlled the music’s ebb and flow well, but with reduced string numbers (just eight first violins) balance was an occasional issue notably in the Prelude and climaxes elsewhere never quite soared. That said, things bode well for the remainder of the cycle – best apply early for next year.

David Truslove | June 2026

A sure-footed feast as Alberich descends into madness

One hundred and fifty years on, Wagner’s Ring Cycle remains the most ambitious project an opera company can undertake. It doesn’t seem to have phased Grange Park Opera, however, as the company embarks on a five-year odyssey with full cycles in the diary for 2030.

With its aquatic opening, magic tricks and grand procession across a rainbow bridge, Das Rheingold poses a considerable technical challenge. All credit to Charlie Edwards’s clear-sighted production then that the storytelling remains comprehensible even if the special effects hint at modest budgets. His set designs, especially the scene where the Rhinemaidens appear to float behind a scrim, pay homage to the 1876 Bayreuth premiere, while Industrial Revolution references bring to mind Patrice Chéreau’s iconic centenary Ring.

Decked out in Gabrielle Dalton’s elegant Victorian costumes, Wotan and Fricka might be Richard and Cosima Wagner themselves, especially as it’s the woman here who’s left to deal with the bills. The possibility that the whole thing might be Alberich’s borderline psychotic fever dream makes for a richly woven tapestry indeed.

Much of it works extremely well with the action flowing organically within the scenes. Getting from one location to the next, on the other hand, sometimes feels like treading water, while the dragon and toad projections, Donner’s storm and the switch-on rainbow seem pedestrian. The nod to what was then the new phenomenon of electric lighting is clever, but the endless tinkering with a wall-mounted fuse box wears thin.

Musically it’s a feast. Harry Sever conducts a sure-footed and impressively detailed reading of the score, the music moving fluidly and the structural arc secure. The English National Opera Orchestra clearly relishes getting its teeth into some Romantic-era red meat for once, with all departments on exemplary form.

The performance is anchored by the heroically sung Alberich of David Stout. His transformation from bewildered prole to Victorian dandy is an original idea; his descent into madness a promise of things to come. James Rutherford is an authoritative Wotan, his ample voice pinging off the walls of the auditorium. As Loge, Mark Le Brocq is vocally expressive even if the Dr Strangelove tic feels like an overly oblique in-joke.

Among the rest of the cast, Christine Rice is a lyrical and surprisingly sympathetic Fricka with Matthew Rose a rich-toned, touching Fasolt. Wielding a giant spanner, Thomas Isherwood is a ballsy Donner while a hard-working Adrian Thompson makes more of Mime than most (with no extras, he takes great delight in wheeling the entire hoard on himself). Opening the show in style, Ailish Tynan, Olivia Rose Tringham and Charlotte Bateman are as classy a shoal of Rhinemaidens as you’d find anywhere in the world. Despite the heat and excruciatingly uncomfortable seats, this Rheingold is a promising start.

Clive Paget | 21 Jun 2026

Going for gold: Grange Park Opera’s Ring cycle gets under way with an excellent Rheingold

Staging a Ring cycle is the pinnacle for any major opera house; the resources, the continuity and sheer musical demands placed upon a company are significant, which makes it the more impressive when one of our country house opera festivals is taking on such a challenge. The challenger energy of Grange Park Opera under the inimitable Wasfi Kani has led to the contracting of the Orchestra of English National Opera to perform Wagner’s Ring – a second attempt after the suspension of ENO’s own cycle midway through – launched this summer with the first of the four works, Das Rheingold.

In many respects, Charles Edwards’ production is uncontroversial and plays into older trends of Marxist readings of the work. The gods are upper class, decked out in pristine Victorian white frocks and three-piece suits, enjoying their stylishly monochrome surroundings where space is a luxury. They are casual in their breaches of contract, relying on superiority to get one over on the honest worker, the giants, stiff and formal in their brown flannel, but eager for the respect that their labour deserves.

Alberich is transformed here from the ordinary working man – a brief moment before the prelude begins gives hints of something reminiscent of a solider or miner – into the ultimate capitalist who brutalises his workers, the ultimate Marxist nightmare clad in garish check trousers. The depiction of Mime’s torture is perhaps the most bracing moment of the evening: the elderly figure is trapped in a metal cage which Alberich electrifies with cables, prompting screams of anguish. Edwards, who also designed the set, relies heavily on a transparent curtain, onto which is projected Valhalla and striking anvils, but which also allows, through games of light and shadow, to depict Alberich’s transformations through the Tarnhelm. It’s a production with plenty to relish, from the suggestion that much of Alberich’s anger stems from jokes about his penis size – the words “pimpled dwarf” uttered when staring down his trousers – to the suggestion of romance, either Stockholm-based or real between Freia and Fasolt. With the exception of a gag about a fuse-box which never completely took off, Edwards gets pretty much everything right, including its casting.

The production hinges on a magnificent performance by David Stout as Alberich. Stout’s baritone is big, but beautifully coloured, with a focus on the text that informed everything he did. Once or twice, there was a wobble towards caricature, but Stout always brought it back, giving us an acutely psychological reading of a fascinating character. His greed, his rage, his pride and ultimately his humiliation were depicted with flair; with no disrespect to his colleagues, this production belongs to him. As Wotan, James Rutherford occasionally weakened towards the end of a line but showed a resonant, slightly lyrical bass-baritone. In contrast to Stout’s emotional Alberich, he brought imperious stolidity to Wotan.

Completing the central trio, Mark Le Brocq brought a pale and incisive tenor to Loge; as a demi-god, no white finery for him, but a black smock with fiery hair and the kind of spectacles that scream of small print and morally questionable decisions. Le Brocq’s voice is not huge, but the role is wordy and Le Brocq brought a sense of narrative to his phrasing that suited the character. Among the smaller roles, Matthew Rose brought his trademark sensitivity and depth to Fasolt – nuanced in his dramatic portrayal, and that sense of poetry to his singing, all underwritten by his ebony bass, while Christine Rice’s coppery mezzo-soprano was thoughtfully deployed as a sophisticated and perspicacious Fricka. James Schouten displayed a bright and ringing tenor to Froh, juxtaposed against the darker tones of Thomas Isherwood’s Donner. Special note to Adrian Thompson whose acting as Mime showed depth, accompanied by a forceful vocal display in the higher register when he brings the gold and witnesses his tormentor shackled.

In the pit, Harry Sever led ENO’s orchestra in a lithe reading of the score, eschewing any sense of the ponderous. Brass occasionally veered towards the strained, but the string colour was rich and Sever emphasised melody and drama. Grange Park Opera really is to be commended on an excellent start to this most enterprising endeavour.

Dominic Lowe | 22 June 2026

Musically, this was a strong effort, led by Stout’s magnificent Alberich, rightly taking the final curtain call

Wasfi Kani is nothing if not ambitious. If petite Longborough – the Bayreuth of the Cotswolds – can stage Ring cycles, then so can Grange Park Opera: one episode per season until 2029 and then a complete cycle in 2030. She’s even secured Anthony Negus, who established Longborough’s Wagnerian credentials, to conduct Siegfried and Götterdämmerung, but for now his talented assistant Harry Sever is at the helm as the cycle launches with Das Rheingold. Brass players trumpeted the ‘gold’ motif from the balcony, à la Bayreuth, a fanfare to summon the audience inside to immerse themselves in the Rhine.

Bayreuth’s Festspielhaus, built by Wagner specifically to stage his works, celebrates its 150th anniversary this summer. As if to acknowledge that, Charles Edwards’ production has a distinct 1870s vibe. The Second Industrial Revolution is under way and Fasolt and Fafner have come to install electricity to Valhalla. David Stout’s Alberich is dressed like a Barnum & Bailey ringmaster. James Rutherford’s Wotan and Christine Rice’s Fricka could even be Richard Wagner and Cosima themselves, with Mark Le Brocq’s long-haired Loge wearing clerical garb, just like Cosima’s father, Franz Liszt.

There’s even a nod to stage technologies of the period too: shadow projections – which don’t always behave – for Alberich’s transformations, a megaphone, Rhinemaidens on stepladders behind a scrim. Some of the tech is more recent. The ring itself sports a tacky, outsized diamond that illuminates, replicas of which you can purchase from the gift shop as a memento, although I can’t vouchsafe any magical powers or guarantee against curses.

Musically, this was a strong effort, led by Stout’s magnificent Alberich, rightly taking the final curtain call. His rich baritone had plenty of snarl as the despotic dwarf, lording it over Adrian Thompson’s whingeing Mime, kept in a cage cruelly wired up to the electrical grid. Rutherford’s flinty Wotan was an impressive achievement, matched by Rice’s forthright, often exasperated Fricka.

After a stonking Philip II in Don Carlo the evening before, Matthew Rose returned in suitably gigantic voice as a doleful, lovesick Fasolt, with David Shipley’s grittier bass as his brother, Fafner. Rachel Nicholls’ Freia was ferociously incisive – Brünnhilde is her usual Ring role – and drawn as a feisty teenager, slicing an apple for her fellow gods on her return but petulantly refusing to give any to Wotan, who has caused her whole dilemma in the first place. Thomas Isherwood was a hot-headed Donner, with James Schouten’s mellifluous Froh a bohemian artist, sketching his fellow gods.

Le Brocq’s patrician Loge was brilliantly portrayed, far from the usual caricature, but singing the text beautifully, an involuntary tic in his left hand providing moments of comedy. Sara Fulgoni’s Erda wobbled unsteadily, but Ailish Tynan, Olivia Tringham and Charlotte Bateman made for an enticing trio of Rhinemaidens.

Sever conducted a persuasive account of the score, always attentive to his singers. Rippling woodwinds and majestic brass accompanied us from the River Rhine up to Valhalla. However, it’s all very well to field the Orchestra of English National Opera, whose own Ring cycle was cruelly aborted, but Wagner’s string music needs more heft than just four cellos and four double basses can muster.

Once Alberich’s curse has been laid, Erda issued her dire warning from Row G of the Stalls and Fasolt bludgeoned to death with a spanner, Donner blows the palace’s new electrical circuit and the white-suited gods take their places in the Parthenon-style pediment frieze… all except Wotan, who instead accepts the sword Nothung from Erda, thus setting up the plot for Die Walküre. To be continued…

Mark Pullinger | 22 June 2026

With Barrie Kosky’s ongoing Covent Garden production dominating metropolitan perceptions of Wagner’s tetralogy and Longborough Festival Opera having set a high bar for country house Wagner, it was brave of Grange Park Opera to embark on its own four-year Ring project. Some elements survive from Stephen Medcalf’s one-off take on Die Walküre with which Wasfi Kani’s miraculous, then new house dipped a toe in the water in 2017, more from the company’s Tristan und Isolde of 2023. The director is again Charles Edwards and many of the cast are returnees. The conductor is now Harry Sever, the rising star who assisted Anthony Negus at Longborough, his own approach suitably tight (after a slightly shaky start) but lacking the thunderous power the music demands at salient points. That ENO’s Orchestra (or perhaps two-thirds of it?) was available to occupy the more modest pit of a rival theatre is testament to the undermining of that great institution by the powers-that-be, a boon for the present company no doubt but still… GPO has always been a fiercely independent outfit and if compromises have to be made – there is at least one performance in the run that includes a long interval for insatiable picnickers – they are never primarily artistic.

The size of the theatre and its excellent acoustics mean that voices need not be forced. So is this perhaps Wagner as it ought to be heard? And seen? In his tweaks to the scenario Charles Edwards has no truck with Kosky’s fashionably ‘green’ agenda or anything else of that nature. There are post-Wagner-era mechanical constructs on display in an industrialized Nibelheim and much play with a fuse box or burglar alarm in Wotan’s well-appointed mansion but seemingly no subtext. In this ‘classic’ interpretation no particular concept or period dominates except that costumes are vaguely Victorian / Edwardian. The use of drapes, gauze screens, sleights of hand and puffs of smoke might seem positively antediluvian were these not combined with up-to-the-minute video projections and quite a few post-modern jokes. The descent into Nibelheim is accomplished via a sequence of flashing geometric shapes. Otherwise the images include unstartling planetary bodies and in-period architectural details. The direction seems primarily interested in character and humanity with nothing crucially undercut by stage business. I did tire of the plethora of paper – invoices? plans? artwork? Is Edwards perhaps signalling future frailties when, in Das Rheingold’s resplendent climax, these bourgeois gods process into the tympanum of their not quite finished Greek revivalist Valhalla via a builder’s ladder. A vestigial rainbow is suggested by the malfunctioning electrics. James Rutherford’s Wotan remains at the dining table, finally presented with the legendary Nothung sword in a sort of apocryphal teaser trailer for future episodes.

This is not a production animated by Loge’s fire – the director’s choice and no reflection on Mark Le Brocq’s splendid incarnation of this untethered ‘classless’ character. Perhaps hoping for a coup de théâtre to rival Kosky’s, Edwards has Sara Fulgoni’s eloquent Erda appear in the stalls and emote from there. Many of the singers must now count as GPO regulars. Even so Matthew Rose is luxury casting. Psychologically plausible as Fasolt, his enormous voice is wonderfully controlled. If the Fafner of David Shipley is less resplendent he compensates with a detailed and convincing characterisation. Christine Rice is a superb Fricka, vocally top-notch and never one-dimensional in reacting to decisions made in part to preserve her own lifestyle. Adrian Thompson turns in one in a lifetime of memorable cameos as Mime. That some of the lesser characters are closer to ciphers is the composer’s fault. Hard to discern any serious weaknesses in James Rutherford’s Wotan or David Stout’s Alberich. In short the show works well. And it goes without saying by now that the Theatre in the Woods is magical, always worth a return visit, the setting more intimate in character than comparable venues despite its closeness to London. Country-house opera loses some of its charm when the rains come.

Colin Anderson | 20 June, 2026

Grange Park’s plucky Ring cycle gets off to a fairytale start

It seems no challenge is too big for Grange Park Opera. On Sunday night, the company launched its four-year project to present Wagner’s huge four-opera Ring cycle, with Das Rheingold. Here the theft of the Rhinemaidens’ gold by the dwarf Alberich and his forging of the all-powerful Ring set the drama in motion. It’s a knockabout, fairytale beginning, often played for laughs, but in this insightful production it seemed humanly complex and surprisingly moving.

Much of the credit must go to director and set designer Charlie Edwards, who evokes the vast world of the Ring on Grange Park’s modest stage with such delicate imagination. Charmingly old-fashioned “magic lantern” projections on a gauze curtain portray Alberich’s transformation into a giant or a toad, and the underwater grottoes where the Rhinemaidens swim. Valhalla, the gods’ new home, is a swanky nouveau-riche classical-style palace in dazzling white, and in Gabrielle Dalton’s beautiful costume designs the gods become 19th-century plutocrats in luxurious cream.

The characters are disconcertingly malleable and shape-shifting: David Stout’s Alberich has all our sympathies in the first scene when he’s tormented by the Rhinemaidens, but by the third scene, where he has forsworn love to forge the stolen gold, he’s become monstrous, like some heartless Victorian factory supervisor. James Rutherford as Wotan, the King of the Gods, begins as a feckless dreamer but shows a nasty streak when – to pay the giants for Valhalla – he steals Alberich’s gold. Christine Rice as Wotan’s wife Fricka seems a high-minded scold but she gives hints right from the beginning of being all-too corruptible.

Most unexpected of these transformations is the goddess Freia (Rachel Nicholls), who is first terrified of and then snuggles up to the giant Fasolt, played with touchingly stiff-limbed, injured dignity by Matthew Rose. The single most riveting performance is from Mark le Brocq, who plays the fire-god Loge as a cynical manipulator with an uncontrollable twitching hand, like the mad professor in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove.

Vocally the evening isn’t on such a high plain as the drama – only Rutherford in his quieter moments brings some vocal distinction to the evening – but conductor Harry Sever paces the drama shrewdly and the orchestra of English National Opera relishes Wagner’s magical colours.

At the end, the earth goddess Erda, played by Sara Fulgoni, appears with a sword, which she places like a challenge in front of the gloomy Wotan. Who will be the hero to wield it, and redeem the mess he’s made? We must wait until next summer to find out.

Ivan Hewett | 15 June 2026

Grange Park Opera opens its four-year Ring cycle with a theatrical Das Rheingold

The big advantage of seeing Wagner at England’s summer opera festivals is the venues’ intimacy. With the exception of Glyndebourne, these theatres deep in the countryside seat around 600-700 people, roughly a third of Wagner’s own festival theatre at Bayreuth.

He wanted his works to be music dramas and that is what we get. The best of Grange Park Opera’s Das Rheingold, the start of a new cycle of Der Ring des Nibelungen over four years, is when the words come across as if in a play. At least, that is what happens when the singers strive to make the German text clear (thank you Mark Le Brocq and Christine Rice).

In setting out the origins of the story to come, Das Rheingold entwines myth with family drama, ecology and an allegory about avarice and power. By the end of this “preliminary evening”, the currently unfolding Royal Opera Ring emerges as a drama about the destruction of the natural world, while the latest production at Bayreuth proposed a Succession-like dynastic struggle.

Grange Park Opera’s Rheingold is less political. Its running theme is that it is a theatrical performance from Wagner’s own time against the background of the industrial revolution. Director and designer Charles Edwards has set up a confrontation between aristocratic, “old money” Wotan and Alberich, a capitalist entrepreneur. This Wotan’s Walhalla is a Greek temple — Wagner, admirer of Greek tragedy, might have approved — and the gods ascend to take their place in its pediment like the sculptured figures in the Parthenon. Nibelheim becomes a blackened, underground factory control room, where Alberich brutally cages his lackey Mime.

For the rest Edwards tells the story clearly, using low-budget projections to change scenes and for magic effects, like Alberich’s transformations into a giant serpent and a toad. It is amusing to see the Rhinemaidens “swimming” on contraptions similar to those used in some 19th-century productions and the lightning from Donner’s hammer is created using electric power, pioneered around this time by King Ludwig in his palaces.

In this scenario James Rutherford’s Wotan has a certain godlike nobility about him, though he might yet rise to a more expansive vocal grandeur, and the solidly sung Alberich of David Stout is no caricature of a grasping dwarf, but a grim business magnate.

Rice’s Fricka is nicely varied, letting slip her own desire for expensive trinkets. Le Brocq’s Loge, a long-haired and nervy intellectual, finds more in the role than just slippery guile. Among the rest, Matthew Rose stands out for the ample beauty of his voice and Adrian Thompson for his clearly-sung Mime. Sara Fulgoni’s Erda, asked to pronounce from the middle of the audience, is barely intelligible, making her dramatic warning even more enigmatic than usual.

Grange Park has hired the Orchestra of English National Opera for its Ring and it is a shame that weaknesses are exposed by the reduced numbers in the pit, starting from out-of-tune playing in the Prelude, but conductor Harry Sever paces the opera well. This Rheingold may be less than golden, but there is enough to suggest the rest of the cycle should be worthwhile.

Richard Fairman | June 22 2026