Too Much Gold, Too Few Norns and Too Many Maidens: Chris Walton samples the first instalment of Bern’s first-ever ‘Ring’

The advertising campaign for Das Rheingold in Bern has emphasised that this is the first-ever time that Wagner’s Ring is being performed in the City Theatre. That seems surprising, as I thought that every house in the country, big or small, had tried its hand at the Ring over the past century-and-a-quarter. Wagner is nothing new to Bern – I vividly remember attending Parsifal there as a student back in the 1980s (with Yvonne Minton a wonderful Kundry). And the size of a pit or stage never used to be a hindrance to the Big Works in Switzerland, where ninety years ago it was considered par for the course to replace absent woodwind instruments with a harmonium. But a cursory search on my part hasn’t turned up any previous Rings in Bern, so it looks as though the operatic authorities there have indeed done their homework.