Christine Teare Wellgunde/Bruennhilde Jennifer Rhys-Davies Woglinde/Freia/Sieglinde/Waldvoeglein/Gutrune Camilla Ueberschaer Flosshilde/Fricke/Grimhild James Hancock Froh/Siegmund/Siegfried Sigurd Karnetzki Loge/Mime Antony Ransome Wotan/Gunther Alan Fairs Alberich/Fasolt Nandor Tomory Fafner/Hunding/Hagen David Seaman Musical direction Peter B. Wyrsch Stage direction The Wagner Orchestra Pocket Opera Company of Nuernberg This is the Ring in one evening, for a reduced orchestra and eight singers. David Seaman fitted fourteen hour of music into four by using only the music that advances the plot. There is no ride of the Valkyries (just the one Valkyrie), no Donner, barely a Froh, in fact not much divine machinery at all. The collective Gibichungs are converted into a single mezzo, who is called Grimhild for convenience. Four fifths of the plot turns out to be in Goetterdaemmerung, and surprisingly close to the Nieblungenlied. The only recapitulation that isn't cut is Siegfried's autobiography, which has to stay because it justifies Hagen killing him. Interestingly, this gives the second part of Siegfried and Goetterdaemmerung together something like the shape of Tristan: love, drug, separation, recapitulation, fight, second recapitulation, he dies. Probably the most useful thing about this version is that it demonstrates what Wagner wasn't doing. It doesn't make sense unless you know the operas already. It's not that you need the exposition to understand the plot, rather that the Ring is about foreknowledge and memory, and how all the stories you try to tell about the universe are true but don't make any difference except to demonstrate the tragic futility of it all. What happens is not the point. It's how it is worked out through a series of transactions marked by changes in ownership of the ring. The exercise is like trying to extract a plot from Faust 2. About the same happened in musical terms as with the plot. Quite apart from the tatty effect of Wagner played by an eleven-piece orchestra, the complex weaving of the themes disappeared and left fragments of themes that didn't mean much because you hadn't heard them where their meaning made sense first. The Nothung motif stuck out like a sore thumb, because the sword has a practical role in the action, and people talk about forging it or using it. (It came close to being like the Grand Duchess of Gerolstein's father's sabre, presumably modelled on Nothung -- everyone stops and sings the motif whenever it's mentioned.) The production, again, didn't make much sense, until Goetterdaemmerung at least, if you did't know the Ring already. The front curtain had an image like a child's building block, which turned out to be Valhalla. Wotan and Fricka carried on a large red solid one when they first appeared and Wotan held it upright in his lap at one point. The Rhine daughters wore sailor suits, the gods wore hunting pink, Bruennhilde had a military tunic, Alberich and the Gibichungs wore leather greatcoats, Siegfried had a youth-organization outfit. The Rhine ran in a shallow canal across the stage, and people splashed and fell in it and put chairs in it. Tarnheim was a supermarket plastic bag, and then a dustbin bag. Alberich turned into a dragon by holding a long pink balloon, and Fafner was a much larger long blue balloon. Without the thematic tapestry, all this didn't add up to a lot, and it wasn't even clear whether it was a parody or not. One idea that nearly came off was making Loge into a Curt Bois-like slimy cabaret singer. Sigurd Karnetski sang his music as if it were by Fritz Hollaender -- interestingly a fair proportion of it worked that way. He also had the fixed grin and other mannerisms of, say, Mack the Knife, appropriately for the amoral source of destruction. Karnetski did Mime as a batty musician, starting off in the pit with a premature erruption from his triangle and coaching Siegfried in conducting as he forged the sword. There was less obvious point to this, though it got about the only laugh of the evening. I was tempted to leave during the first five minutes of the performamnce because the orchestra, especially the brass, started desperately, and the Rhine daughter were even worst. It was tipping down with rain, so I stayed and fortunately the performance settled down to musical mediocrity. Christine Teare as Bruennhilde sounded as if she was in the right sort of area vocally, and Alan Fairs as Alberich and Fasolt was good and heavy. But in general, the singers' main achievement was delivering the plot with clarity. And singing a large amount of music on three out of four evenings this week. I could have listened to Anna Russell's Ring twelve times this evening, and got some laundry done...