Opera Scotland

Rheingold 2000Scottish Opera

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Scottish Opera’s third assault on the Ring started off with better prospects of completion than its predecessor, largely because a generous chunk of the funding was coming from the Edinburgh Festival and a commercial sponsor (a bank). Even so, when the company went through one of its periodic financial crises after the cycles were performed in 2003, critics of the enterprise were quick to use the Ring as a weapon, it seems with little justification – the source of the financial problems lay elsewhere.

Tim Albery’s staging was relatively straightforward, with his usual overlay of visual wit to leaven the seriousness. Musically it was difficult to find anything to complain about. Richard Armstrong had already built a cycle a few years earlier in Wales, and he chose a group of singers with little previous experience of the work, and therefore little to unlearn.