When it comes to Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Barrie Kosky has form. Back in 2009, the Australian auteur embarked on a cycle for Staatsoper Hannover, a venture he now describes as a “trainwreck of a production” overcrowded with ideas. As part of his second go at the tetralogy, this time for London’s Royal Opera House, he’s cannily retained one particular image from his directorial past: the figure of the ancient Earth Goddess Erda, depicted here as a naked old woman whose bewildered face and shuffling gait suggests a dementia sufferer. It’s a remarkable performance by 82-year-old Rose Knox-Peebles, the actor and model who gave such a haunting performance in Todd Field’s film Tár.

A woman in goggles with pipes plugged into her stands in a hole in a large fallen tree behind two men in black jumpsuits. One is carrying a bucket of tree sap, the other is in mid-step, smiling.

Rose Knox-Peeble, Christopher Purves, Sean Panikkar, in Das Rheingold at the Royal Opera House. Photo © Monika Rittershaus

Kosky’s Erda doesn’t just pop up to warn Wotan in the...