Opera is back in Melbourne – in a big way, with this fully staged Das Rheingold at one of the city’s largest theatres. The new Melbourne Opera production begins a Ring cycle that will continue over the next few years, culminating in the entire cycle’s presentation in 2023. It’s an audacious pandemic project for the independent company, which has taken many significant steps forward on the stage in recent years.

Das Rheingold is more a bold leap. Directed by Suzanne Chaundy, who has led Melbourne Opera’s move into big-stage Wagnerian works over the past five years, this production is ambitious without overreaching. Before an 80-strong orchestra, the accomplished all-Australian cast inhabits a set of monumental simplicity, starting Wagner’s complex, symbolic four-part saga with musical and narrative clarity.

Melbourne Opera Das RheingoldJames Egglestone, Lee Abrahmsen, Jason Wasley, Eddie Muliaumaseali’i, Sarah Sweeting and Darcy Carroll in Melbourne Opera’s Das Rheingold. Photo © Robin Halls

After excerpts were performed in Vienna in 1862, Das Rheingold premiered in Munich in 1869. The Ring’s preliminary one-act (150-minute) work opens with the Niebelung dwarf Alberich renouncing love so he can steal the water nymph Rhinemaidens’ gold and forge a magical ring. Through...