Bleak Expectations: Simon Williams finds the themes in Francesca Zambello’s San Francisco ‘Ring’ needing a little more work

Francesca Zambello’s production of Das Rheingold begins and ends with strikingly contrasting images. At the start, the Rhinemaidens in rich creamy gowns cavort joyfully in a tumbling mountain stream; at the end, in blackened rags, they bitterly watch Wotan and his fatuous godly crew ascend a gangplank to Valhalla. The message is clear; Alberich and Wotan in their struggle for wealth and power have polluted the natural world and burnt all that nurtures life.