For reasons best known to themselves (perhaps to capitalise on an A-list cast) the Mariinsky launched its series of live Ring Cycle recordings with the second opera of the tetralogy, an acclaimed Die Walküre. Now they’ve backtracked to Das Rheingold, Wagner’s “Vorabend” (“preliminary evening) and if the names in the frame aren’t all as familiar as Walküre’s, fear not: this is a top shelf cast in a musically and dramatically involving performance. 

René Pape brings serious star wattage as Wotan, of course, and he’s a majestic but lyrical god, singing with meltingly beautiful timbre and a Lieder-like intensity whose relative lack of thunder only heightens our nervous anticipation of the storms ahead. A supersized, sonorous wife would be at odds with his suave Wotan, so Ekaterina Gubanova is a well-chosen Fricka, singing on a similarly elegant scale and with a beguiling hint of soprano-ish silver. 

Of their offspring, it’s Alexey Markov whose clarion Donner makes the most vivid impression, though there’s little to fault in either Viktoria Yastrebova’s Freia or Sergei Semishkur’s Froh. Stephan Rügamer’s slender, high-lying tenor (the kind one half expects to break into Britten at any moment) brings unctuous relish and pointed detail to Loge, while Andrei Popov’s Mime takes the more traditional character tenor route, indulging in nasal, Igor-esque effects which, thankfully, he has the nous to pull off and which contrast tellingly with Rügamer’s slicked-back charm. 

As his craven overlord, Nikolai Putilin’s Alberich is very much the dark, grim opposite of Pape’s Wotan, singing with forceful tone and guttural gusto; it’s not the most variegated vocal portrayal, but it’s quite compelling, and Putilin’s solid energy mostly compensates for his fairly haphazard German diction. Evgeny Nikitin and Mikhail Petrenko warm to their roles as Fasolt and Fafner respectively, Zlata Bulycheva’s Erda strikes an eerie note, and the Rheinmaidens who book-end the work – Zhanna Dombrovskaya (Woglinde), Irina Vasilieva (Wellgunde) and Ekaterina Sergeeva (Flosshilde) – are a nicely matched, if slightly earthbound trio. 

There’s not much comedy in Gergiev’s reading of the score, which dwells on the solemn, stately side of Rheingold. The laughs are hardly missed though, among such sumptuous, immersive playing as the Mariinsky Orchestra provides. A stickler for chronological order, I’ve yet to hear their Walküre, but if this striking Rheingold is any indication, the entire cycle is certainly one worth following.