Game of Cones: Matthew Rye tries to keep a straight face through the first two instalments of a decade-old Bulgarian staging of the ‘Ring’

Reviews of Das Rheingold, directed Kartaloff, conducted Baleff, Sofia, 2010 (Dynamic, 1 Blu-ray disc); Die Walküre, directed Kartaloff, conducted Baleff, Sofia, 2011 (Dynamic, 1 Blu-ray disc).

November 2021, Volume 15, Number 3, 81–3.

There comes a point (sorry) where things conical can seem comical. The defining visual element of Sofia Opera’s Ring cycle, staged by the company’s own artistic director Plamen Kartaloff in designs by Nikolay Panayotov, is an oversized ice-cream cone, employed vertically at its fullest size to represent the repository of the gold and the towers of Valhalla, as well as, on the horizontal, Grane and his Valkyrie-ridden stablemates. Smaller cones, with obvious allusion to Madonna’s mammary accoutrements, and other sharp appendages also distinguish the extravagant, asymmetric costuming of many of the characters (Wotan, for instance, gets through a whole wardrobe’s worth of threatening, barbed capes). In addition, there’s a 1950s/60s sci-fi vibe about the visuals that in its seeming absurdity makes it difficult to know whether we are to take the works’ import seriously or see it as a Marvel-style cartoon, even if there’s an attempt at gravity in scenes such as the Annunciation of Death and final scene of Die Walküre. Like more than one Ring production in the last decade, design appears to have triumphed over idea, and substance is replaced by spectacle.