Terje Stensvold is a relatively late-starting but true-sounding baritone Wotan who phrases the god’s pronouncements well. Kurt Streit has not lost the subtlety of his Ferrando in his refreshingly straight, unguyed Loge. Jochen Schmeckenbecher similarly avoids the clichés of shouting and yelping while proving you can be a genuinely dark Alberich through pure singing. American Meredith Arwady is a stunningly rich real old-fashioned contralto Erda. Sebastian Weigle’s lighter narrative conducting – somewhat in the manner of Pappano and Kempe, another ex-wind player – is at present more effective in the second half, where Wagner has a better balance between arioso and recits. It’s a strong, carefully assembled cast and it’s already had a good press unseen on the CD release. But seeing adds disappointingly little.

On the bonus ‘making of’ DVD, director Vera Nemirova and award-winning house Intendant Bernd Loebe seem keen to downplay the technical and intellectual virtuosity of this recent production. It’s unfortunate (and boring) that Jens Kilian’s standing set for the cycle rehashes Wolfgang Wagner’s more mobile version of his brother Wieland’s Scheibe – a sliced, raked circular disc with visible underlay for Nibelheim. Taken together with Ingeborg Bernerth’s no-period 1960s stage clothes, not much happens to excite mind and eye.

Until the final half hour Nemirova stays her director’s hand. She hasn’t bothered with a choreographer for her Rhine girls or to clearly routine the gods’ and Nibelungs’ non-entrances from understage. But, if you watch closer than live audiences could, it’s noticeable on the singers’ faces that all have an exceptionally clear idea of the text – yet little goes into the physical production. Then Alberich, as he delivers (well) his curse on the ring that Wotan has just stolen from him, gets uncomfortably close to his nemesis and Stensvold shows with impressive clarity how the god’s whole day (and, indeed, future) have been spoiled. The handling of Freia too is good and prominent – she’s never just a doll in the background. And for the final scenes after her ransoming there’s an interesting (and non-realistic) indication in staging and costume of the gods’ heartless concert that the action effectively becomes.

Maybe this style is continued in the rest of the cycle but here it becomes merely an appendage to a rather unremarkable couple of hours. The challenge of Das Rheingold – many characters onstage for lengthy periods of time with little to say and do except ‘be’ – is not really faced here. So, disappointingly perhaps, it’s back to older, more physically exciting stagings (Chéreau and Kupfer from Bayreuth) for small-screen recommendations.