Wagner - Das Rheingold

This is without doubt the worst performance of Rheingold I have seen, and pails into insignificance against the two dvds of it in my collection. I was surprised that a German opera house would allow it and a German audience would applaud what was I am sure not at all in line with Wagner's original idea. It was obvious that those responsible for the production wanted to introduce new ideas, and in my opinion many of them did not work. At the beginning three girls appear, not in the original. Then Wotan and Alberich are sitting at a table in front of the Rhine, and Wotan has two good eyes. Throughout the opera, Alberich wears shoes which shorten him to dwarf size, with his legs clearly showing behind. Then in his cavern he appears full sized and goes behind a curtain for his change to a dragon and a toad, the latter being laughable. In the last scene he reverts to the shoes and is again a dwarf. The changing of scenery whilst the action was taking place was also annoying. The worst was at the end Donner, who is aptly described in the other review, raises his hammer, and pulls a chord instead of bringing it down releasing the clouds. These are produced by a smoke machine in full view, all illusion gone in smoke. Then to top it all the stage hands produce a board which is the bridge to the castle which looks like a picture frame but possibly was a lift. I should mention that the giants were the usual on stilts, but here they were visible, and their ears and lipstick looked stupid. Having discussed the production changes from norm, I do not think blu ray added anything as a lot of the opera was on the dark side, and the cast was not the best I have heard.

The picture quality on the animated menu screen on the Blu-ray is excellent, with the characters almost appearing three dimensional. The picture quality of the video itself is not so eye-popping, though probably better than the DVD.

The production has some interesting ideas, but also ones that didn't seem to make much sense, but seemed there purely to be different and supposedly original. It also has the worst interpretation of Donner I've seen - he looks like an Italian pantomime villain! And his hammer scene is a big anti-climax, and played for laughs.

The performances are okay, and at least I didn't hear any bum notes from the orchestra!

Worth watching for the Wagner fan, but not a production I would return to.