Der Ring des Nibelungen review – less is more in Regents Opera's whittled-down Wagner

The Guardian

19-02-2025

Regents Opera are staging their first Ring cycle not in an opera house but in the spiritual home of British boxing in the East End of London. The counterintuitives don't end there. There's no Wagnerian-scale orchestra of 90-plus players in this Ring either; instead, just 22 heroically committed musicians give their all in a skilfully reduced version rescored by conductor Ben Woodward.
Nor is the nearly 15 hours of action mounted on a conventional stage. Instead, this Ring is performed in the round, in an in-your-face way that grips the attention. Everything is acted out on a raised white oblong not much bigger than the York Hall canvas on which Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua began their careers. Call it the Ring in the ring if you choose.
But declare it a knockout too. For, although the Regents Ring is a very different experience from Wagner in the opera house, the intensity and involvement is remarkably undiminished and even enhanced. When you consider how much money, planning and labour it takes to stage Wagner's cycle, and remember how opera houses have faltered in the task recently, this Ring, which has still cost more than half a million pounds, is something of a marvel, and with not an Arts Council grant in sight.
Woodward and the Berlin-based director Caroline Staunton (who contributes useful essays in the programme book) have built their Ring up gradually since 2022. Das Rheingold was first performed in 2022, Die Walküre a year later, and Siegfried last February, all in the Freemasons' Hall in Covent Garden. This month's Götterdämmerung now provides the final part of the project.
True, this is not the Ring of one's dreams, if such a thing is ever possible. There are manifest faults and rough edges. The staging can be gnomic, and the string tone in Woodward's band sometimes gets thin towards the end of a long act. Overwhelmingly, though, the ears and eyes adjust, and driven by Woodward's urgent conducting, you don't spend the evening wondering where the Wagner tubas or the timpani have got to.
What lifts this Ring above the level of an admirable oddity are two things. First, the minimalist proximity of the staging – a few movable white blocks serve multiple purposes – and the almost total absence of sets means the focus is relentlessly on character and psychology. The chief beneficiary of this is Siegfried, who under Staunton's insightful direction is permanently struggling – even in his death scene – to understand his identity and his relationship with the world.
It also helps that the main roles are so reliably sung. More than that, indeed, in the case of Ralf Lukas's Wotan, who brought the well-schooled vocalism of a long career in German opera houses to the Ring master's role. In Das Rheingold, Lukas was perhaps less impactful than James Schouten's sinuous and articulate Loge and Oliver Gibbs's dark-toned and implacable Alberich. In Die Walküre and as the Wanderer in Siegfried, however, Lukas sang with a consistently elevated authority and a lieder singer's attention to text.
Neither Catharine Woodward's Brünnhilde nor Peter Furlong's Siegfried, admirable though each was, quite reached that level. Woodward, though, was an immensely sympathetic and committed Brünnhilde throughout, and she saved her best till last in a Götterdämmerung immolation scene of vocal distinction and probing understanding. Furlong's light-voiced Siegfried was indefatigable in this most punishing of roles, as well as attractively sung.
Elsewhere, Justine Viani was notable for the fire and intelligence of her Sieglinde and Gutrune, and Andrew Mayor made as much as one can out of Donner and Gunther. Brian Smith Walters was a gutsy and gritty Siegmund, Simon Wilding a commanding Hagen, and Henry Grant Kerswell an affecting Fasolt. Holden Madagame acted outstandingly as Mime, though the upper voice had little body. Mae Heydorn was a hypnotic Erda (as well as singing a Rhinemaiden and a Norn), and Corinne Hart an unusually interesting Woodbird.
Staunton's direction offers insights, puzzles and some jokes. As the Wanderer, Wotan turns up as an electrician to fix the lights. The production has its own leitmotivs, including a fire extinguisher as a murder weapon, a frock worn by three different characters, and occasional bursts of shadow boxing, presumably a homage to the setting. Isabella van Braeckel's designs and costumes are an eclectic and entertaining mix.
With the cycle's 150th anniversary approaching in 2026, Regents Opera's Ring is the only British performance of Wagner's cycle about power and renewal this year. Hats off to them. With deluded megalomania so topical right now, this Ring could hardly be more timely.
Further performances of Götterdämmerung 20 February and of the full Ring cycle from 23 February.