Empty Gestures: Mark Berry yearns for more substance in the latest instalment of the Berlin/Milan ‘Ring‘

Guy Cassiers’s production of the Ring continues, in its second instalment, to baffle, but the nature of my bafflement is different from that in any other Ring I can recall. If ever there were a work overflowing with ideas – the overflowing and the conflict being part and parcel of the experience – it is surely the Ring. Yet the Belgian director, making his first foray into the opera house, seems to have none at all, let alone any sympathy with the strenuous intellectual and emotional demands presented by Wagner’s score. I was highly critical of the Weimar Ring, released on DVD, but at least it tried to provide some conceptual framework, however confused. The concern of the present production, already staged at La Scala, seems to be to present a pleasant backdrop for what otherwise might as well be a concert performance.