We left at the interval...

Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, Sunday November 5 2005 Siegmund: Peter Seiffert. Hunding: Stephen Milling. Wotan: Jukka Rasilainen. Sieglinde:Petra-Maria Schnitzer. Brünnhilde: Olga Sergeyeva. Fricka: Mihoko Fujimura. Helmwige: Jennifer Wilson. Ortlinde: Annalena Person. Gerhilde: Eszter Sümegi. Waltraute: Priti Gandhi. Siegrune: Marie Lenormand. Rossweise: Deanne Meek. Grimgerde: Daniela Denschlag. Schwertleite: Annette Jahns. Orchestre de Paris. Christophe Eschenbach. Am I becoming reasonable in my old age? For a start, it isn’t normal to begin the season with five successes in a row. And then, the wars of words are still raging on the web over this Ring , which at least one person has declared the worst thing he has ever seen or heard in his opera-going life. Yet, as far as I’m concerned, episode two was just as good, musically and visually, as the first instalment and once again the cast was remarkably and unexpectedly strong and even. The last time I saw Peter Seiffert was in Tannhäus...

Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, November 1 2005 Conductor: Christoph Eschenbach. Production, sets and lighting: Robert Wilson. Wotan: Jukka Rasilainen. Donner: Laurent Alvaro. Froh: Endrik Wottrich. Loge: Arnold Bezuyen (replacing David Kuebler). Alberich: Sergei Leiferkus. Mime: Volker Vogel. Fasolt: Franz-Josef Selig. Fafner: Günther Groissböck. Fricka: Mihoko Fujimura. Freia: Camilla Nylund. Erda: Qiu Lin Zhang. Woglinde: Kirsten Blaise. Wellgunde: Daniela Denschlag. Flosshilde: Annette Jahns. Orchestre de Paris. Perhaps the final performance, on November 1, of the current run of Das Rheingold illustrates the fact that, though we do it all the time, you can’t judge a production from a single evening. I’d read and heard all kinds of worrying things about it: “singing zombies” in a stultifyingly static production, devoid of all humour, with shaky effects where any Wilson show needs to be a precision machine; a catastrophic orchestra, too light, too heavy and too slow; singers miscast, wi...