Götterdämmerung, review: 'a tremendous achievement'

At each step of this enthralling traversal of the Ring, Opera North has challenged its modest resources and produced results that have surpassed reasonable expectations: now it reaches the final and most demanding episode, the bar is set high.

The conductor Richard Farnes does not fall short. There’s a prevalent myth that something superhuman and egomaniac is required to realise the visionary grandeur of Wagner’s conception, but Farnes refuses to play the grandstanding maestro: he simply sharpens his tools and gets down to the job.

“Keep calm and carry on” might be the watch-word for an interpretation that seems unerringly to track the pulse of a richly complex narrative, reminding us that the Ring is fundamentally neither philosophy, tract nor allegory but a fireside story of gods and men, heaven and earth.

Farnes respects this raw epic quality. He isn’t pretentious or precious with the score. Nothing is highlighted or skimped, but the inexorable onward flow never falters, reaching an overwhelmingly powerful climax in Siegfried’s Funeral March, Brünnhilde’s Immolation and the redemption of a corrupt world from a primal curse. Enhanced by the spacious acoustic of Leeds Town Hall, the orchestra plays on as if possessed.

This is a concert-hall staging, sung in German with surtitles, costumed in slightly characterised varieties of evening dress and decorated only by video displaying vaporous film of flickering flames, rock face and wild forest. There were times when this latter element seemed distractingly hyperactive, but there is space to imagine and no sense of being short-changed of theatrical excitement, for which Peter Mumford is credited as being responsible.

Outstanding among the cast is Alwyn Mellor, whose Brünnhilde gets better and better as the evening progresses (in the opening duet she sounded tense, but the Immolation was radiantly commanding).

Mati Turi, a burly Finnish tenor, makes a sympathetic and vocally secure Siegfried, plausibly the cheerful gullible backwoods boy and making much of his dying moments. Mats Almgren was a spookily saturnine Hagen, with Eric Greene and Orla Boylan persuasive as those wimpish patsies Gunther and Gutrune. Among the immortals, Susan Bickley was a magnificent Waltraute, and a beautifully blended trio of Rhinemaidens had the edge over the under-powered Norns.

Altogether a tremendous achievement. A complete cycle is due in 2016 and awaited with impatience.

Further performances on June 18 and Jul 12, also touring to Symphony Hall, Birmingham (0121 345 0600), The Sage, Gateshead (0191 443 4661) and The Lowry, Salford (0843 208 600). Tel: 0113 247 6647; www.operanorth.co.uk