Orchestrally, this was a fine Ring, with bright, unflagging playing from the Melbourne Ring Orchestra. Pietari Inkinen, another late recruit in 2013, again conducted. He is a busy conductor, and the tetralogy passed without mishap, but Inkinen’s reading lacked authentic Wagnerian majesty and oomph. When it mattered most, music of great profundity passed by without the requisite emotional heft or reverberation. The Funeral March was one example: it merely sounded loud and monochromatic, not helped by the State Theatre’s plush acoustic.

Convention has it that the Ring is about the conflict between love and power. In Act II of Die Walküre, Wotan – the scarred and sorrowing god – tells Brünnhilde, ‘When the joy of young love departed from me, my spirit longed for power.’ Armfield has written, ‘In absolute terms the pursuit of wealth requires the denial of love. Wagner wrote the Ring in the thick of the clamour and smoke of the Industrial Revolution. In the Ring he was creating a great poem about the future of civilisation. He could see the ferocious growth of capital changing the world forever. He could see the natural world being torn apart, the wars fought, the families divided in what has proved to be an apparently endless process of expansion; turning natural resources into wealth and then manipulating wealth to create more wealth.’  This may sound modish, even Pikettian, but Wagner – despite the archaisms of his libretti, not to mention his wardrobe – is ever modern and renewable. Those taxidermic animals and slumping gods bespeak general inanition just around the corner.

It opens, of course, with Das Rheingold, Wagner’s ‘preliminary evening’. Problems remain with the first and last scenes. The opera begins with the famous, sustained low E flat from the Rhine. But why all these supernumeraries in bathers? They mooch about, staring. What do they signify? The Rhinemaidens – Woglinde (Lorina Gore), Wellgunde (Jane Ede), and Flosshilde (Dominica Matthews) – sang well. When Alberich appeared, sex-starved but ultimately content with gold, they teased him mercilessly.

Jane Ede, Dominica Matthews, and Lorina Gore as The Rhinemaidens in Opera Australia's Das Rheingold (photograph by Jeff Busby)

Warwick Fyfe, returning as Alberich, sang powerfully each night; his performance was even more inspired than the one he gave, at short notice, in 2013. Fyfe was always acting, flinching, leering, and there were some neat touches, such as when, like a boy in a playground, he skipped around the stage in delight during his scene with Wotan and Loge, there to steal the Tarnhelm.

But why, in that first scene, must costumier Alice Babidge strip Fyfe to his jocks? Don’t we have imaginations? The same applied to Liane Keegan, a substantial woman who was dressed in a pale sleeveless nightie. We now know that Stefan Vinke – returning as Siegfried in the last two operas – declined to be undressed before Siegfried’s Funeral March. ‘People are coming to hear me sing, not to see me nude on stage,’ he told Matthew Westwood of The Australian.

Notwithstanding, Keegan was a commanding Erda, as she was in Adelaide in 1998 and 2004. She sang equally well in Siegfried. Small though this role is, Erda is one of Wagner’s pivotal creations, and she has some of the best music in the Ring.

American bass-baritone James Johnson, who first sang the role in Paris in 1988, was an underpowered Wotan. Although he looked the part and acted well, Johnson was not in good voice on the first two nights; there was a distinct lack of volume. He rallied in Siegfried, helped by the Wanderer’s rather different music and tessitura.

Michael Honeyman, despite his silly toy pistol of a hammer, was a good Donner. Andreas Conrad was in fine comic form as Loge.

At the end of the Rheingold, as the gods prepare to cross the rainbow bridge, the showgirls appeared. Is this what Wagner intended for this noble and ambiguously triumphant music, as the spiteful gods are sucked towards their mortgaged dream castle? It was difficult to attend to the music amid such a display. One sat there admiring the beauty of the colours, the precision of the formations, the preternatural excellence of the dancers’  legs, while music of matchless grandeur played in the background. Something was lost here, something more de luxe than feathers.

James Johnson as Wotan in Opera Australia's Das Rheingold (photograph by Jeff Busby)

Die Walküre is the most successful work in the Armfield production. This is fitting, Die Walküre being perhaps the greatest of operas, with a first act of singular perfection, some of the most beautiful passages Wagner ever wrote, and five compelling individual principal roles.

Stuart Skelton – a memorable Siegmund in 2013, as in the Adelaide Ring (2004) – was missed, but Australian tenor Bradley Daley made a fine impression in his stead. He was at his best in that greatest of scenes, the Todesverkündigung, when Brünnhilde announces Siegmund’s imminent death and his journey to Valhalla.

Daley’s opposite, the young American singer Amber Wagner, was sensational as Sieglinde. Listening to her, one immediately thinks of Jessye Norman – those powerful chest notes. The top is ringing and very secure. Vocal highlights were many, including an extraordinary ‘Der Männer Sippe’, followed by ‘Du bist der Lenz’. Sieglinde rose to soaring heights in ‘O hehrstes Wunder!’ before fleeing to prepare for the birth of Siegfried. Amber Wagner is a revelation: let us hope it is not too long before we hear her again.

Lise Lindstrom was a welcome new Brünnhilde. Young, blonde, slender, she was a perfect Valkyrie, and her singing, right from that searing entrance, was accurate and powerful. Armfield exploited the marked age difference between Lindstrom and James Johnson (Wotan) to great effect. Rarely has the tenderness between father and daughter – loving confidants – been conveyed so stirringly. In Act III, after Brünnhilde’s disgrace, Wotan’s farewell to his daughter (to some of Wagner’s greatest music) was almost unbearably moving.

James Johnson as Wotan and Lise Lindstrom as Brünnhilde in Opera Australia's Die Walküre (photograph by Jeff Busby)

Jacqueline Dark, as the ever-exasperated Fricka, most alarming of stepmothers, was superlative, and Jud Arthur (Hunding) sang and moved with force and menace.

As between the first two offerings in the Ring, the dramatic and tonal differences between Walküre and Siegfried were huge. Act I finds Siegfried, illicit child of Siegmund and Sieglinde, being raised by Alberich’s mendacious brother Mime. They live in a dump, incongruously set beneath designer Robert Cousins’s high white proscenium arch. Desperately, Mime tries to forge the shattered Nothung while Siegfried romps on his bunk-bed and paints his dragon.

Act I can be a testing one in the theatre. Postwar directors have felt a reflexive need to deprive Siegmund’s posthumous son (and Wotan’s grandson) of any heroic potential. In doing so they often make him tedious or fatuous – a buffoon in whom we struggle to believe during the poignant meditations of Act II and his enraptured rescue of Brünnhilde in Act III. Things could not have been more different on opening night. Even the soup-making scene, which can be interminable, was amusing. The physical comedy and interplay between Mime and his charge worked well, thanks to vibrant performances from Graeme Macfarlane (Mime) and Stefan Vinke (Siegfried). Macfarlane – who would be droll at a funeral – has made the role his own. Vinke, who was good in 2013, was even better this time. Both these singing actors took it fast and furious, but everything went to plan and in the famous Forging Scene – the Schmeltzlied or Schwertlied (Melting or Sword Song) – Vinke gave Lauritz Melchior a run for his money.

Siegfried is one of Wagner’s toughest creations; we have all heard some dreadful botches and surrenders to human frailty. But Vinke was heroic all night. Nor is he capable only of flamboyant, sustained high notes. Some of his most beautiful singing came after he had dispatched the loathsome dwarf.

Stefan Vinke as Siegfried in Opera Australia's production of Siegfried (photograph by Jeff Busby)

The dragon scene was done well. Jud Arthur, as in 2013, was the dragon. The cave itself was merely a hole beneath the ubiquitous proscenium arch. Why waste millions of dollars on a dragon, as they did in Adelaide in 2004 – a folly that ended up giving the finger to the audience and any principles of economy?

The love duet in Siegfried is one of the most gradual and ecstatic of its kind. Siegfried duly found Brünnhilde on a kind of rock from Ikea, wrapped in plastic, like the ones for the taxidermic animals. This long scene requires great artistry from both principals. Lise Lindstrom, looking magnificent after her epic sleep, was magnetic as Siegfried kissed her awake. With a mixture of tenderness and fright, she resisted Siegfried’s advances and lamented her lost godlike status. Then, to the most exhilarating music, Brünnhilde relented and the lovers – aunt and nephew – rhapsodised about the new day. Both singers sang with lustre and aplomb – a thrilling finale.

After the exaltation of the closing duet in Siegfried, we had to wait until the second part of the Prologue to Götterdämmerung before meeting the post-coital lovers. Back on the rock, Siegfried and Brünnhilde’s exposed mattress was set far back on the large stage. This presented some difficulties for both singers, who seemed understandably tired after their heroics in Siegfried. Early on, Lindstrom evinced signs of strain. Then she simply sang louder, longer, surer – a revival worthy of her character. When Brünnhilde offered Siegfried her steed, Lindstrom produced a long, ecstatic trill, something few Brünnhildes risk.

Stefan Vinke as Siegfried and Lise Lindstrom as Brünnhilde in Opera Australia's production of Siegfried (photograph by Jeff Busby)

Lindstrom, a Californian of German-Norwegian extraction, is fairly new to Australian audiences; last year she was Turandot in Sydney. Lindstrom has sung Brünnhilde once before (Walküre only, in Palermo); this is her first complete Ring. It surely won’t be her last. Lindstrom is a revelation: magnificent to behold on stage, with a cutting voice and fearless high notes.

What a shame, then, that the interlude between the Prologue and Act I was spoiled by the return of the aimless extras when Siegfried set off on his journey down the Rhine. During one of the greatest passages in the Ring, the supernumeraries performed a Mexican wave and jarring aerobics. Who were these people? Why were they there? It was an embarrassment.

The rest of the opera progressed with the usual elations and longueurs. In the first scene of Act I, the hall of the tribe of Gibichungs had been turned into a private gymnasium. The following acts contain some remarkable and transgressive music, beginning with Hagen’s dream scene in which Alberich appears in his sleep and adjures him to retrieve the Ring. Of the several Hagens Arts Update has heard from Daniel Sumegi (beginning in Adelaide in 1998), this was by far his best.

Luke Gabbedy as Gunther, Daniel Sumegi as Hagen, and Stefan Vinke as Siegfried in Opera Australia's Götterdämmerung (photograph by Jeff Busby)

Musically, Wagner begins to do all manner of things he has previously eschewed. The double wedding is set in a white marquee redolent of more weddings than Arts Update likes to recall. As if exhausted (though never destitute), Wagner throws in a magnificent chorus – the very thing he has resisted throughout the Ring. Act II even ends with an almost Verdian trio in which Brünnhilde conspires with Gunther and Hagen to destroy Siegfried.

The long scene preceding Siegfried’s execution lacked a certain edge, but Vinke was good throughout. Having a shopping trolley on stage (for the obligatory slabs of beer) seemed de trop; it distracted from the gravitas and sheer monumentality of the Funeral March. Then it was time for Brünnhilde’s slow, charismatic entrance at the back of the stage. Imperiously she silenced the mournful Gutrune. After the unfortunate extras had appeared, it was Brünnhilde’s melancholy duty to expiate the gods’ manifold sins and return the Ring to the Rhine. Lise Lindstrom was in radiant voice throughout the Immolation, never faltering.

Stefan Vinke as Siegfried and Lise Lindstrom as Brünnhilde in Opera Australia's Götterdämmerung (photograph by Jeff Busby)

Götterdämmerung, it must be said, is a flawed dramatic work. One thinks of the abrupt efficacy of Gutrune’s magic potion and Siegfried’s convenient loss of memory. Then there is the suddenness and ferocity of Brünnhilde’s vengefulness towards Siegfried when she sees him with Gutrune. Only Verdi – Wagner’s great rival and antithesis – could have depicted such rapid, Italianate enragement. And then there is the ending. ‘Why,’ a friend of Wagner’s wrote to him, ‘since the gold is returned to the Rhine, is it still necessary for the gods to perish?’

Nonetheless, as Nietzsche wrote: ‘[Wagner] knows of a chord which expresses those secret and weird midnight hours of the soul when cause and effect seem to have fallen asunder and at every moment something may spring out of nonentity ...’

Nonentity, for a week, in this demoralised and meretricious age of plutocrats and Trumps, was emphatically overcome.