Wagner's Ring Cycle from Fabio Luisi in Dallas

The last complete audio recording of Wagner’s Ring Cycle crossed the finishing-line eight years ago courtesy of Jaap van Zweden, so it’s rather fitting that the new contender which dropped last week comes from his successor at the Dallas Symphony Orchestra Fabio Luisi, at the helm of the band which he inherited in 2020.

Captured live at concert performances during 2024, the results are largely impressive and on occasion revelatory: seasoned Wagnerians will find much to surprise and delight, and those dipping a toe in the Rhine’s waters for the first time will find Luisi a clear-eyed and compelling guide.

Indeed it’s Luisi and his orchestra who are the stars of the show: as soon as the Rhine surges into life during that astonishing Prelude to Das Rheingold, you know you’re in safe (but never staid) hands. The forward momentum and sense of transparency which he brings to the music here sets the tone for what’s to follow: this Ring is unusually light on its feet, with the Valkyries sounding properly airborne in their famous Ride and Siegfried’s Rhine journey unfolding with a similarly springy impetus.

It’s only when that journey reaches its tragic conclusion that the gloves really come off: the sheer power and density of sound in the Funeral March took my breath away, its effect all the more shattering because Luisi has kept his powder fairly dry until then. This being a set of live recordings, there are inevitably a few blips along the way in terms of ensemble and intonation – the stars don’t quite align for the Rhinemaidens’ joyful hymn to the gold, and the wheels briefly feel in danger of spinning off as Siegfried and Brünnhilde reach their feverish climax – but it’s a relatively small price to pay for the energy and excitement of the whole.

Luisi’s unstarry but rewarding cast is firmly on the lyrical side, mixing established names with comparative newcomers: several of the key players make assured role debuts, and there are a number of stand-out voices among the Norns, Valkyries and minor gods. American bass-baritone Mark Delavan has exactly the right weight and colour for Wotan, and is fully alive to the character’s volatile vulnerability: this is a very human king of the gods, painfully aware of his failings and frailties in his dealings with both his wife and his favourite daughter, and his diction (like that of most of his colleagues) is crystal-clear throughout.

Singing his first Siegfried, Swedish tenor Daniel Johansson barely puts a foot wrong in this most arduous of operatic assignments, bringing a bright-voiced, fresh-faced likeability to a potentially unsympathetic role and pacing himself admirably: it’s only in the final stretches of the Siegfried love duet and the long Götterdämmerung narrative that we hear slight signs of flagging, and he rallies impressively for his dying paean to Brünnhilde. Andreas Schager, the current go-to tenor for this monster role, may finally be able to take some time off: Johansson’s Siegfried is already close to being the full package.

As his ill-starred father Siegmund, Christopher Ventris sounds rather less at ease: strongest in the lyrical love music, he never quite taps into the character’s angry instability and one senses that he’s husbanding his vocal resources carefully in that intense first act of Die Walküre, which doesn’t catch fire as it should on various counts. Sara Jakubiak’s Sieglinde is on surer footing, less opulent of voice than some but bringing a brittle nerviness to the role which pays great dividends in her long Act One narration and Act Three panic-attack.

The silver-toned Lise Lindstrom does a fine job of capturing Brünnhilde’s youthful energy and charts her emotional journey with great nuance; on the flipside, the voice can develop an intrusive beat under pressure, and descending phrases (most notably in the Immolation Scene) sometimes disappear.

Of the newcomers, Deniz Uzun impresses as a lyrical, deeply wounded Fricka, and Kathryn Henry (multi-tasking effectively as Helmwige, Dritte Norn and Gutrune) fields a steady, golden tone which suggests that more substantial Wagnerian assignments may well figure in her future.

Caveats aside, this new Ring has much to recommend it: come for Luisi’s firm but fluid hand on the tiller, stay to witness the crowning of a new hero in Johansson.