Antony McDonald

'With 'Götterdämmerung', the final part of Richard Wagner's mammoth cycle 'Der Ring des Nibelungen', the National Reisopera in Enschede brings the curtain down with great elegance on an especially successful project spread out over four years. Alas, it is also the end of the Reisopera in its old form.....When Valhalla finally went up in flames and the Rhine broke its banks and the natural order was once more restored, it was evident that Spanjaard and his troops kept their powder dry. In conjunction with the spectacular tableau dreamt up by McDonald - a runaway Ferris wheel on fire - this 'Ring' came to a fiercely blazing end. It is a 'Ring' that McDonald has kept deliberately parochial. A bourgeois 'Ring' in which, first and foremost, a plain story is told in simple, clear language. We had already seen that Ferris wheel in 'Das Rheingold' when it was a component part of the Valhalla built by the giants, a long way away in the mountains. At the time, the family of Wotan were taking amusing snaps of each other while they waited at a tiny station for the little cogwheel train that would carry them up there. Now, at the start of 'Götterdämmerung' , the snapshots were in the photo album being leafed through by the Nornen over a dainty cup of coffee. The album ended torn into pieces, the snapshots flew into the air; this family would be meeting its end.

McDonald invented beautiful images, to which he added ravishing scenery (the majestic house of the Gibichungen on the Rhine) and costumes (the stunning, mud-edged dresses of the Rhinemaidens). His stage direction was likewise spick and span. Rarely have we seen such a well-personified, la-di-da Gunther as this - sung, incidentally, with great class by Thomas Oliemans.

In the person of Renatus Mészár, the nutcase Hagen (who licks the leftover blood from the ground after the blood brothers scene because he wants to belong so much) was troubled by a throat infection that was playing up, but what a vile figure he portrayed!' Trouw, Peter van der Lint