We could use a new Ring on DVD. The versions by Levine and Boulez are ageing and variously unsatisfactory, while a somewhat better one, Barenboim’s Bayreuth cycle, languishes unreleased. That ought to give Stuttgart’s new set, with its first-rate vision and surround-sound, every chance – but does this first instalment offer any improvement?

Musically, not really. Das Rheingold features some fine supporting singers, including Freia, the Giants and the Rhinemaiden trio, but the opera stands or falls on three roles. Esa Ruuttunen, a decent Alberich in Helsinki’s staging, here sounds lean-voiced and unmenacing. Robert Künzli’s Loge is under-characterised. Wolfgang Probst’s Wotan is a seedy spiv, unsteady and colourless of voice and an uninvolving actor.

In Die Walküre, bass Jan-Hendrik Rootering displays more power and character, but sings unsteadily and coarsely, and reduces Wotan to a lumbering, irritable couch-potato. Angela Denoke’s Sieglinde sounds surprisingly sour-toned, and Robert Gambill’s Siegmund is overly careful. Renate Behle’s Brünnhilde is unappealing; her acting is committed enough, but her acidulous tone and straining for power sound frankly feeble next to her DVD rivals, Gwyneth Jones for Boulez, and Hildegard Behrens for Levine. Her Valkyrie sisters are no improvement. Only Tichina Vaughn’s Fricka – and Lothar Zagrosek’s conducting – shows real fire. That Zagrosek is a fine Mozartian shows in his fluently lyrical approach, a welcome counterbalance to the turgid Levine and the glibness of Boulez. He isn’t dramatically distinctive or deeply nuanced, but he lends much- needed animation to a distinctly lifeless stage.

It’s no accident that he is this Ring’s sole unifying factor. The tetralogy is so little respected as serious drama these days that the latest fashion among is to employ four disparate producers. Stuttgart does this, with questionable results. Not especially shocking, however. In fact, choreographer Joachim Schlömer’s Rheingold staging is characterised chiefly by the lack of challenge it presents either producer or audience, from its conventionally modern-dress political Konzept to its unchanging set, the hall of a decrepit 1930’s spa, and its reduction of magical imagery to the baldly everyday (the Tarnhelm as a mirror) or campy (tinny anvils on a hand-cranked gramophone) or gratuitous (Alberich as ‘serpent’ bites a lamb’s head off, Freia disrobes to be measured against the treasure). The discrepancy between stage and score is no doubt the point, but for me the staging works best in the rare moments – Erda’s appearance, for one – when it comes closest to reconciling the two.

Producer No 2, Christoph Nel, makes Walküre, if anything, more reductionist, with a featureless wood-panelled set like a 1960s’ concert hall. A rickety table and chairs represents Hunding’s hut, less effectively than Scottish Opera’s similar concept; other set-dressing is equally nondescript, including an airbed for Wotan, and a long grass-stalk for his spear. Dress is again grunge-modern: Denoke is merely reduced to her slip, but Behle’s teenybopper costume destroys all credibility – likewise her Valkyrie sisters, galumphing around like mock-teenage tarts, waving crude wings. The concluding magic fire is – cue giggles again – a few little tealights on Act 1’s shaky table.

One is left wondering why, with so many more imaginative and musical productions around – from Helsinki to Seattle to Glasgow – this one got recorded. For a modernistic vision the Boulez/Chéreau set is infinitely more involving, and still more so the Barenboim/Kupfer if it ever reappears. All told, a mediocre beginning; and having seen Stuttgart’s cycle complete, I’d say there’s worse to come.