That Kempe Rheingold 'highlights' in its original LP incarnation was to all intents and purposes my introduction to Wagner, apart from an off-air tape made of most of the first scene from a broadcast of a Kempe-led Covent Garden performance (recently issued on CD). It's hardly 'highlights'. Side one faded in (why?) towards the end of the long Eb prelude, and ended with Alberich fleeing with the stolen gold, thus encompassing the entire first scene. Of the second and third scenes, let alone what occurs between them, there is not the faintest hint.

Side two starts with Alberich's "Bin ich nun frei?", proceeds to his curse then, via Erda's warning, to the final section from just before Donner's summoning of the thunder to the end of the opera. It's a far more human reading for me than Solti's, and when it was reissued on the Classics for Pleasure label, became my standard recommendation for an introduction to Wagner. Some of my converts since have become seriously infected by the Wagner bug, but I seem to have caught a mild dose early enough to have become, if not immune, at least able to maintain a separation from him, although participating in the three cycles at ENO in 1977 (two Goodall, one Mackerras) was probably an unsurpassable experience.

There used to be a very good Glyndebourne video of Barbiere with John Rawnsley as Figaro, btw.