The Ring Report 1

Das Rheingold
The audience smelled of oak with a hint of blackberry. It was a traditional production, but the Rhine Daughters all wore acrobatic harnesses - how they managed to sing, do all those flips and not hurl is beyond me. Alberich was very, very evil - and he changed into the world's cheesiest snake prior to cursing everyone and everything, yadda, yadda, yadda. Wotan might have been sporting a mullet. I wasn't close enough to tell for sure. The giants were surprisingly un-gigantic, but they carried large spears (which actually made them look even smaller), wore billowy clothes and rocked some impressive doo rags. Conversely, the dwarfs were quite big. They did a lot of crouching and also wore doo rags. Niebelheim was dark and slightly disappointing. Loge and Mime were sub-par. Donner and Froh were idiots. Freia was good, Erda was superb and Fricka was a pain in the ass - as usual, she sucked the life out of every conversation. Funny thing: after Fasolt gets killed by Fafner, I could totally see him breathing - fake! At the end, everybody troops across the Rainbow Bridge to Valhalla. I don't know how they did it, but it was kind of cool to see.

Tomorrow: hot brother-sister action!