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We saw the world end in Berlin, again. Another Ring Cycle – hurrah! – in the beautiful Staatsoper theatre on Unter den Linden. Christian Thielemann led the house’s superb orchestra from the dawn of Creation in Das Rheingold to the downfall of the Gods in Götterdämerung. It was a brisk Ring, coming in at seven minutes over 14 hours. The playing was magnificent, the singing of a very high order and the anti-mythological staging by Dmitri Tcherniakov startling. Particular praise must go to the Sieglinde of Lithuanian soprano Vida Mikneviciute – try saying that after a few scoops of pilsner. Thrilling hardly does her justice.

In April 2002 I was fortunate to hear Daniel Barenboim, Thielemann’s predecessor as the Staatsoper’s music director, conduct all ten major Wagner operas in a fortnight. It is now an even finer orchestra, and we were the lucky ones. A week of joy and, as Dämerung can mean dawn as well as twilight, the Ring enfolds us forever. ‘A wind that is always blowing, a stream that is always flowing,’ an early reviewer wrote of this colossal work. We unrepentant Wagnerians will keep returning to the Rhine – not that we saw it in this production – because, as James Merrill wrote in a memorable poem........

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