Das Rheingold in Sofia

The Ring cycle was not performed in Bulgaria until 1943 and though that country has a fine reputation for opera, with large-voiced singers prominent on the international scene, Wagnerian music drama is not “natural” for them. Nor, it would seem for audiences since, at the current revival of the 2010 Sofia production of Rheingold, the ending of the first scene was interrupted by applause. The demanding opening of this work provides a good indicator of the quality of the orchestra and it has to be said that the swirlings in the Rhine were distinctly muddy. Veteran conductor Manfred Mayrhofer, whom I last heard in Gelsenkirchen in the 1970s, engendered neither the sweep of sound required for the epic episodes, nor the bite for those which were more dramatic. And the cast began their task rather uncertainly. Then something remarkable happened. Arrived on the scene Daniel Ostretzov as Loge who, unlike his colleagues, was relaxed and sang idiomatically. That seemed to influence all around him because the performance took off dramatically and musically. The Nibelheim scene was particularly successful. The largely traditional production by Plamen Kartaloff was visually pleasing (designer Nikolay Panayotov) though there was some clumsy movement on stage; it did not reveal much psychologically but operated effectively as story-telling. What will happen with Walküre which relies less on external phenomena we shall have to see …