Striking gold

If I said what I really thought about Götterdämmerung at the Longborough Festival, of which I saw the last of four performances, anyone who wasn’t there would think I was madly exaggerating; but anyone who was there would agree — I have run into several people who were at one or another of the performances, and they were all breathless with excitement and admiration for this astounding achievement. Raving doesn’t make for enjoyable reading, I realise, so I’ll try to be a bit more specific.

In the first place it was a tremendous team effort with, at its centre, the fanatical dedication and experience of the conductor, Anthony Negus, colleague of Reginald Goodall but very much his own man in particular points of interpretation. Act I under Negus, for example, was almost 20 minutes shorter than under Goodall; but Negus allows plenty of time for phrases to shape themselves, often in contrast to another phrase that is going on elsewhere, in the pit or on the stage, so that the sound is always lucid, balanced.