Collectors who own EMI’s out-of-print edition of Reginald Goodall’s live Rhinegold need not acquire Chandos’ 24-bit remastering, which offers slight rather than major sonic improvement. In any case, this is the best-engineered installment of Goodall’s English National Opera Ring Cycle, with the stage and pit proportions in perfect balance. Not even stage and audience noises obscure the clarity of Wagner’s softest scoring, while Donner’s invocation of thunder in Scene 4 packs a sonic punch that will surely wake the neighbors at full blast. That said, Goodall’s draggy pacing throughout Scene 1 reduces the lively and dramatic interplay between the Rhinemaidens and Alberich to staid, stilted recitative. Likewise, we get a sedate and mildly scary rather than gripping, terrifying vision of Niebelheim in Scene 3. Scene 4’s happenings, however, are superbly characterized, from the semi-comic piling up of the gold to the spacious handling of the Gods Entry into Valhalla.
The finest singing comes from Robert Lloyd and Clifford Grant as the lovelorn Giants, as well as from Anne Collins’ stately rendition of Erda’s warning and Norman Bailey’s mellifluous Wotan. Derek Hammond-Stroud’s excellently articulated Alberich is a bit polite and underplayed for my taste, while Emile Belcourt sings Loge with dryish tone, yet compensates with his artful and clear vocal acting. Andrew Porter’s brilliant English translation is always understood, but it doesn’t hurt to have the libretto in hand. Most recordings of this opera take up two discs. However, Goodall’s record-breaking three-hour tour (as opposed to the standard two-hour, 20-minute timing), requires three CDs. One thing remains constant over the quarter century since Goodall’s English Rhinegold first came out on LP, and that’s my basic original German language Das Rheingold recommendation: either Solti/Decca or Karajan/DG.
