ENO tries Ring on for size

However variable the component parts, the final part of Wagner's Ring cycle always proves overwhelming. Five hours of music, many dead, evil gold returned to the Rhine.

ENO's concert performance of Twilight of the Gods, in preparation for full stagings at the restored Coliseum next year, was full of good things and at times tore at the heart. If that implies mixed results, it is no insult.

Ring cycles take years to build up for that very reason: the undertaking is enormous, the potential for disaster even greater.

In Richard Berkeley-Steele, ENO has found an exciting new Siegfried, having already lost one by the wayside. Wagner's "untaught" hero, too often mere brawn, is here a force of nature, bullish, attractive and fatally cocky. He can sing impressively as well as act, a rarity in Wagnerian heldentenors. Gidon Saks's Hagen was loud and bloodcurdling, if hardly subtle.

Robert Poulton as Gunther brought depth and intelligence to a snake-ish role. Sara Fulgoni made her own expressive mini-drama out of Waltraute's monologue. Claire Weston, somewhat squally as Gutrune, as yet remains ambivalent: is she monster or mouse? Norns and Rhinemaidens were accomplished, the men's chorus chilling and forceful.

Paul Daniel conjured some fine playing from ENO's orchestra, even if the brass were having an unlucky night. If as yet this feels rough and unassimilated like new wine, it is early days. The one - - and large - misgiving is Br¸nnhilde, a role many of us would love to have heard the English soprano Susan Bullock sing. So far the Canadian Kathleen Broderick, a kittenish, leather-clad figure of narrow emotional range, sounding overstrained vocally, has not allayed fears that this is a serious piece of miscasting.