Opera Australia's Die Walkure, from Wagner's Ring cycle, verges on tedium The set's gargantuan spiral ramp has the character and utility of a carpark ramp in a suburban shopping centre. A modest alpine hut, dwarfed on the vast stage, brutally constrains the encounters between Hunding, his wife and her lover. OPERA: Die Walkure Opera Australia. State Theatre, Melbourne, 20 November. HAVING masterfully revealed the humanity lurking within Das Rheingold's panoply of deities and mythological races, the second instalment of Opera Australia's inaugural Ring cycle veers inexplicably towards the insipid - lifeless direction and obtrusive design threatening to engulf the production in a sea of tedium. Somewhat redeeming this uninspired Die Walkure was a first-rate account of Wagner's atmospheric orchestral score, several fine vocal performances, and a handful of powerful characterisations. Regrettably, Neil Armfield's blocking leaves his performers routinely adopting modern performance taboos: the hopelessly dull stand-and-deliver approach of operatic eras past, aimless wandering to pad out instrumental interludes, and that dramatically disjunctive staging technique in which performers are drawn together and repelled in frenetic succession. REVIEW: Das Rheingold is 'utterly human' Robert Cousins's sets - an odd mix of literalism and conceptual banality - provide little respite, compounding rather than resolving dramaturgical weaknesses. A modest alpine hut, dwarfed on the vast State Theatre stage, brutally constrains the encounters between Hunding, his wife and her lover, while the mighty tree into which Wotan's magical sword, Nothung, is impaled is sorely absent and the weapon itself entirely un-noteworthy. The second act introduces a gargantuan spiral ramp that reaches from the revolve to proscenium, piercing a ring through the ceiling that separates the stage and fly area. It has the character and utility of a carpark ramp in a suburban shopping centre. A bare stage is offered for the third act mountain scene - a relative blessing were it not for its impact on the set's already curious acoustic properties, elevating a pervasive metallic resonance in the central downstage area into a disagreeable echo. In such circumstances, the performers struggle to breathe life into their characters, particularly in the extended exchanges that dominate the outer acts. The amorous embers stirred between doomed siblings, Siegmund and Sieglinde, possess all the declaratory ardour of puppy love and none of the flaming passion which might make their incestuous descent somewhat credible. The intimate final scenes between Wotan and Brunnhilde are similarly demoted to awkward rigidity, the desperate pleadings of a disobedient daughter and a torn father's lamenting farewell almost entirely reliant on the music for any sense of dramatic tension. Stilted acting aside, Stuart Skelton and Miriam Gordon-Stewart were a well-matched vocal powerhouse as the Walsung progenitors, while Terje Stensvold blessedly abandoned his pirate-grinning routine as the evening progressed and allowed his gravelly, emotion-laden timbre to convey Wotan's unfolding tragedy. Susan Bullock proved a perky stage presence as Brunnhilde, agitated rather than noble, with a chiselled vocal delivery. Jud Arthur was a vocally imposing Hunding while the Valkyries were suitably shrill. Dramatic honours went to Jacqueline Dark as Fricka: packing fury, passion, manipulation and despair into her brief confrontation with Wotan, despite having to realise the scene on a 10m stretch of industrial ramp.