ACCORDING to general director Anthony Sargent, it was “a proud milestone” for the Gateshead venue, and the launch of a “unique, four-year journey”.

Certainly it was a packed Hall One with a buzz in the air as people settled themselves for the first of Richard Wagner’s 19th Century Ring Cycle operas.

It came courtesy of Opera North, who will bring the other three operas in the cycle here over the next three years.

Although it was a concert staging, with no sets or costumes, a triptych of big screens behind the orchestra gave a sense of heightened drama.

Along with rippling water and misty mountain peaks, the screens occasionally flashed up contextual passages.

This was in addition to the simultaneous translations of German into English on screens positioned at every level to the sides of the stage.

As three statuesque ladies materialised in front of the orchestra, the screen told us these were the Rhinemaidens, water nymphs charged with protecting the gold deep in the river. “Luscious as fruit,” they were, and “slippery as fish.”

To me they looked a match for any petty thief but, fatally, they took their eye off the ball for a second and Alberich, the dwarfish Nibelung from the dark nation of Nibelheim situated beneath the bedrock, had pinched the lot.