This issue completes the very welcome reissue of the Goodall/EMI Ring on CD. I write ''Goodall'', but this particular set might better be termed the Hunter Twilight of the Gods. When I last month reviewed the new Haitink version of this opera, I referred to several Brunnhildes, but not—heinously—to Rita Hunter, whose assumption of the role, especially in this culminating work of the cycle, has been one of the glories of Wagnerian singing on disc in the past 20 years. I was astonished anew at how she combines, under Goodall's patient nurturing, the needs of tone, line and words into one seamless and rewarding whole. She is a bright-voiced, ringing Brunnhilde, more in the Nilsson than in the Flagstad or Varnay mould. She can cut through the thickest of textures with her gleaming, heroic tone, yet like Nilsson, she is also capable of controlled piano singing as she shows in her long, musing, distraught solo towards the end of Act 2, and uses vibrato as a means of increasing emotion not as an involuntary necessity. The depth of feeling conveyed through the text informs the whole, wonderful assumption, brought to its thrilling climax in the Immolation. There we hear the tragic heroine succeeding on the complacent lover of Act 1 and the strong-willed revenger of Act 2.
Remedios's Siegfried is in a similar class. Again one marvels at the control of line, the sensitivity to text, the keen yet mellifluous tone. One might ideally ask for an extra touch of metal in the voice, but not at the expense of the steadiness shown here throughout. Like his partner, he is engrossed in his role, evincing the benefit of recording it live, and working responsively and responsibly as a member of an ensemble. Its other members are of more variable quality. No reservations at all about Katherine Pring's urgent, vivid Waltraute sung in strong, unstinting tones. Haugland's Hagen is a louring, forcefully accented assumption sung in even, refulgent voice, but true pitch is not his strong suit, especially at the start of Act 2 when set aside Hammond-Stroud's faultless singing. Both Gutrune and Gunther show a family failing of uningratiating tone.
With Goodall you have once more to adjust your internal clock to appreciate its full import. Even then you may feel that the ardour of the Act 1 love duet is woefully absent and the fire-in-the-belly of the Act 2 denunciations are also hard to find. Against those failings, understandable enough in a 76-year-old conductor, are the wonderful management of the transformations, none more deeply eloquent than that into the Waltraute scene in Act 1, and the tragic power of the Funeral March, and so much else. Above all, there is the understanding of Wagnerian melos, something the composer himself set so much store by; it is here in abundance as the music moves seamlessly, significantly forward.
The recording remains a model of recording in the theatre. The booklet reprints Bernard Levin's witty paean to Andrew Porter's lucid singable translation. ''Completed the eternal work!'' indeed.'