We still don’t have a really good DVD Ring. Daniel Barenboim’s classic version languishes unreleased, better cast and conducted than its Boulez-Chereau Bayreuth predecessor; less vacuous than Stuttgart’s multi-producer farrago (TDK, 4/04, 6/04, 9/04); and, in Harry Kupfer’s starkly high-tech production, more vividly theatrical than the authentic but stodgy Metropolitan set (DG, 1/03). We may yet get it – but meanwhile here begins another Kupfer cycle, in an up-to-date recording from Barcelona. And the good news is that it’s the most recommendable Rheingold so far.

Kupfer’s Bayreuth staging was Teutonically technological and ugly, but despite some dramatic silliness it actually paid more heed than most to Wagner’s stage directions. So does this one, created originally for Berlin, but it’s – so far – a lot more attractive, and rightly attentive to the Ring’s mythological core. Its centrepiece, towering above a black mirrored stage surface, is the massive World-Ash tree, from which we see Wotan tearing his spear, and around whose roots the Rhinemaidens gambol and climb. The action moves up and down the trunk with the aid of the Liceu’s splendid new machinery (putting Covent Garden’s to shame). Sillinesses – recurring suitcases, the gods’ premature entrances and over-extended dance finale, the serpent reduced to feeble claws – are not crippling. Apparently, throughout the cycle, technology invades the stage as the curse advances; but so far this manages to embody the world of the Ring in a form stylised but atmospheric, without embarrassing cardboard rocks.

The not-so-good news is that Bertrand de Billy is no Barenboim; his warm, slowish reading is likeable, but doesn’t generate enough shape and dramatic drive. I’m told he improves in the later operas. Nor is Falk Struckmann’s Wotan the equal of John Tomlinson; he’s a strong-voiced, dynamic presence, but his tone is harsh and vibrant and his characterisation arrogantly unsympathetic, lacking Tomlinson’s roguish charisma. The other two pivotal roles are imported from Bayreuth, but, as at Covent Garden recently, Günter von Kannen is now a rather portly Alberich, and, despite a wonderfully malign glare, short on vocal and dramatic bite. Not so Graham Clark’s Loge, incisively sung, even if his character tenor underplays Loge’s more lyrical side.

Lioba Braun, Elisabete Matos and Andrea Bönig are worthy goddesses, Jeffrey Dowd a strong if not ideally mellifluous Froh and Wolfgang Rauch an unusually impressive Donner. Veteran Matthias Hölle and rising star Kwangchul Youn are excellent Giants, android-like figures more effective than Bayreuth’s de-humanised monstrous puppets. That goes, too, for the romantic rather than tarty Rhinemaidens, particularly Cristina Obregón’s Woglinde.

All told, we finally have a decent modern staging on DVD, recorded in vivid surround- sound and clear if somewhat stygian vision – if, that is, you can live with one infuriating disadvantage. Unlike any other Rheingold this is spread over two DVDs, the side-break is not well chosen, and you have to go through the whole menu rigmarole before the second side. But I greatly enjoyed this, all the same, and look forward to the rest of the cycle.