Moving in Higher Circles: Imaginative sets partially compensate for variable singing in the Frankfurt ‘Ring’, finds Barry Millington

Review of Der Ring des Nibelungen, directed Nemirova, conducted Weigle, Frankfurt, 2012 (Oehms Classics, 9 DVDs).

March 2016, Volume 10, Number 1, 64–6.

Though not on a par with Ruth Berghaus’s landmark production of the Ring for Frankfurt Opera in the 1980s, the staging by Vera Nemirova (recorded here in 2012) offers many original ideas, some convincing Personenregie – especially in Siegfried and Götterdämmerung – and one of the finest Brünnhildes of our time, in the form of Susan Bullock. The strong points, however, are offset by long stretches of less inspired direction (especially in Rheingold and Walküre) and a Siegfried from Lance Ryan so coarsely and crudely sung that one can only wonder why Bayreuth and other leading houses were still hiring him several years later.