Wagner: Das Rheingold [Blu-ray]

Solid opening to the La Scala Ring
The true musical merit and the importance of Das Rheingold is often underestimated or at least overlooked on account of its designation as merely the Prologue to the three parts proper of Wagner's epic Ring saga but it's essential to establish a precise balance and a vision that will propel the audience compellingly into this unique musical journey. The first part of the new Teatro alla Scala Ring, created in 2010, fulfils that remit well, with Daniel Barenboim managing proceedings with precision and drive from the orchestra pit and director Guy Cassiers fulfilling all the requirements to establish a suitable tone that fully supports the work.

I don't know what Wagner would have made of ballet being incorporated into Das Rheingold, but choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's work does help to draw out those deeper premonitory resonances within the work. In addition to the fine performance of the work on the surface level of the stage direction and the singing, the greater...

Wagner wrote"myth is true for all time"
From Amazon.co.uk-I was ranked 408.

According to Steinberg in this Rheingold booklet,the mythic value of the Rhine,is the world before language and before meaning. The transition to the human world happens abruptly with the entrance of the first Rhine maiden,and the disruption comes as a shock. Something has been lost:the state of nature;the world before time. It is as if we had been given a momentary re-entry into a biological Eden,into our own infancy. We only understand this when it is over,and we understand this through the melancholy of loss which informs all earthly reality. What kind of human world are we in after Alberich's theft of the gold? The ring then examines three patterns of Human desire;lust,love;power;knowledge.However,Lee states" Original sinners of myth are ambivalent figures. Their primal offenses bring evil into the world but have ultimately positive effects. The wrestling of consciousness from Nature is associated with guilt,but the step had to be...

You must be kidding
With a cast like this and Daniel Barenboim conducting, I wanted to go for the whole Ring cycle from La Scala. But if this is the Rheingold that I saw in 2010, I decided to stop right there.
Yes, the singing is fine and the projections effective. But although the beginning of Rheingold is "watery" indeed, having all the singers standing ankle-deep in water throughout the whole opera, incl. the ballet - with wet trousers and dresses up unto their knees - was to say the least totally distracting and disgusting.
After that, I really was't in the mood for more.
Actually, and unfortunately, this otherwise very substantial Rheingold was just another of the European Regietheater - you haven't "lived" until you have seen Il Trovatore with Jonas Kaufmann no less, from the Bavarian Staatsoper!! - that I find totally obnoxious. These director seem to use operas as background music for their weird concepts instead of respecting and adjusting their ideas to "come scritto" by the...

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