This "Rhine Gold" makes a powerful case for opera in the vernacular, especially given Andrew Porter's highly communicative translation. Seattle impresario Glyn Ross shows himself to have been a skilled bargain-hunter, assembling a cast that is largely excellent, with Malcolm Rivers' passionate, richly inflected Alberich at the top and Robert Lewis' foggy Donner at the bottom (with the exception of Geraldine Decker's incisive Erda, the secondary gods are the performance's weakest link). The familiarity of the language creates some cross-cultural clashes, as when the hard consonants of Edmund Karlsrud's considerable Fasolt collide with the posh British diction of Raimund Herincx's aristocratic Wotan. The ringer in the Anglophonic cast, Ticho Parly's Loge, is somewhat curdled of tone but he gets his many points across with skill. Paul Crook's Mime is a worthy sibling to Rivers' malign dwarf and Noel Mangin's cynical Fafner also registers ably. Conductor Henry Holt favors slow-than-customary tempi, which sometimes creates welcome spaciousness and is sometimes merely poky. Matters of phrasing, emphasis and articulation are beneath his concern. Fortunately, the cast is able to fend for itself.