THE slightly unsettling fervour of Wagner adepts as they look forward to the start of another Ring cycle is matched by a religious hush as we sit in the dark waiting — for a good 30 seconds — for the thing to begin. And then it does, soft, impossibly deep rumblings emerging from the void to become the longest E flat chord in history, and a single light lost in the blackness of the stage. You think: this better be good.
Opera: Das Rheingold
Robert Thicknesse at Covent Garden
THE slightly unsettling fervour of Wagner adepts as they look forward to the start of another Ring cycle is matched by a religious hush as we sit in the dark waiting -- for a good 30 seconds -- for the thing to begin. And then it does, soft, impossibly deep rumblings emerging from the void to become the longest E flat chord in history, and a single light lost in the blackness of the stage. You think: this better be good.
Unfortunately, it isn't particularly. Not bad, exactly, but deflating given the expectations that any Covent Garden Ring excites. Sure, there's a long way to go, but after 2