For reasons best known to themselves (perhaps to capitalise on an A-list cast) the Mariinsky launched its series of live Ring Cycle recordings with the second opera of the tetralogy, an acclaimed Die Walküre. Now they’ve backtracked to Das Rheingold, Wagner’s “Vorabend” (“preliminary evening) and if the names in the frame aren’t all as familiar as Walküre’s, fear not: this is a top shelf cast in a musically and dramatically involving performance.

René Pape brings serious star wattage as Wotan, of course, and he’s a majestic but lyrical god, singing with meltingly beautiful timbre and a Lieder-like intensity whose relative lack of thunder only heightens our nervous anticipation of the storms ahead. A supersized, sonorous wife would be at odds with his suave Wotan, so Ekaterina Gubanova is a well-chosen Fricka, singing on a similarly elegant scale and with a beguiling hint of soprano-ish silver.

Of their offspring, it’s Alexey Markov whose clarion Donner makes the most vivid impression, though there’s little to fault in either Viktoria Yastrebova’s Freia or Sergei Semishkur’s Froh. Stephan Rügamer’s slender, high-lying tenor (the kind one half expects to break into Britten at any moment) brings unctuous relish and pointed detail to Loge, while Andrei Popov’s Mime takes the...