While the ENO Ring was in preparation, and we were seeing semi-staged performances of the dramas at the old Coliseum and the Barbican, there were plenty of grounds for hope. With action reduced to almost a minimum, we could concentrate on the real action, which needs, I have increasingly come to feel, very little in the way of setting and movement to make its crucial points. That view is starkly opposed to contemporary dramaturgical dogma, which is that the production of dramatic works, especially those of Wagner (for assorted reasons), should contain within itself a critique of the work, just in case we get carried away by what is ideologically objectionable, or allow ourselves to wallow instead of thinking as well as experiencing. The tendency of audiences, perhaps especially Wagnerian audiences, to treat performances as ritual is undeniable and regrettable; but the means taken to counter that tendency often seem to be far worse than the disease.
Anyway, the ENO Ring, semi-staged or less, gave plenty of scope for thinking, aided by largely excellent articles in the programme books. There were of course unevennesses in casting, and Paul Daniel’s conducting I have found to be unreliable, sometimes cogent and with a sense of the long Wagnerian line, but often patchy and fragmented, with odd orchestral balances and an increasing tendency to let timpani players have climaxes almost to themselves. There have been two major changes of cast, Wotan and Siegfried, in the first case a fine performer replaced by a rather weak one, in the second maybe an improvement, but the present Siegfried, Richard Berkeley-Steele, is stronger on appearance and acting than singing, which is ragged and altogether lacking in high notes. But obviously the major difference now that the complete cycle has been staged in the new Coliseum is the contribution of Phyllida Lloyd, with complicit sets by Richard Hudson, which has been at its rare best tolerable, usually irrelevant and often downright incompetent.
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