POST-MODERN WAGNER : SEATTLE OPERA ‘RING’ CYCLE OPENS WITH ‘DAS RHEINGOLD’

For a long and adventurous decade, Seattle--reportedly the city with the largest opera-going audience per capita in America--was proud of its drearily conventional production of Richard Wagner’s “Ring des Nibelungen.”

Seattle was the last place in Western civilization that pretended to take the cartoon world of breastplated super-sopranos, bear-skinned Heldentenors and horn-helmeted villains on face value. Seriously. Literally.

While the rest of the performing universe searched for deep psychological, sociological and even political meaning in the four-part, 17-hour hyper-Romantic marathon, Seattle adhered blissfully to the outmoded conventions of cardboard mythology and sub-Disney fantasy.

All that changed drastically, if not necessarily for the better, last year when Speight Jenkins, the new operatic chieftain on Puget Sound, began a newfangled “Ring” of his own. Directed by Francois Rochaix and designed by Robert Israel, this was to be a “Ring” for the ages, and for the iconoclast.

It was to be a post-modern, thinking-man’s “Ring,” a demystified “Ring” full of brave new ideas and bright new images.

Unfortunately, the preview installment for the summer of ‘85, a lone “Die Walkuere,” flirted decisively with disaster. Most of the mighty Germanic gods were reduced to silly mortals dressed like the bourgeoisie of Richard Wagner’s day. Wotan, in fact, was Wagner, and his music drama a quaintly nightmarish opera within the opera.

That was just the beginning. The would-be thrilling “Ride of the Valkyries” became a comic “Ride of the Carousel Horses.” Reality mingled uneasily with surreality. The erotic spring night in Hunding’s hut was represented by a stuffed baby deer nibbling on a mound of Astroturf. Even the most beguiling stage picture contradicted the nobility, the pathos and the power of the music.

According to a local publication, one perfect if impolite Wagnerite in the audience was so incensed that he spat--repeat, spat--in the face of an innocent souvenir vendor in the lobby during intermission.

There was no spitting, we trust, Saturday night at the “Rheingold” performance that inaugurated the first complete “Ring” of the Jenkins era. That happy fact may relate to what looks, thus far, like a small step back toward respectful conservatism in the staging. It also may relate to the fact that “Rheingold” has no intermission.

Before the week is out, Seattle will know how the first installment fits into the conceptual whole. There already are signs of inconsistency, of unrealized intentions, of technical mishaps and financial compromise. Still, compared to the original “Walkuere,” this “Rheingold” is a work of genius.

Everything, of course, is relative.

The opera does not begin auspiciously. Rochaix and Israel define the depths of the Rhine as platforms and steps covered with miles and miles of blue drapes. Silly.

The erstwhile aquatic nymphs are now a trio of pantalooned Chereau-esque floozies from the Gay ‘90s. Sillier.

Alberich, who is discovered snoozing beneath a billowy curtain, resembles a Sweeney Todd who somehow has wandered far from Fleet Street. Dumb.

Things get more interesting as the plot thickens. The quasi-Victorian gods inhabit a picturesque, quasi-Brechtian terrace equipped with a blue-sky-and-clouds cyclorama and a square, Grecian double-deck structure equipped with a ladder. An invisible Valhalla is located somewhere on the audience’s side of the proscenium.

Wotan descends to a Medium-Tech Nibelheim--where Alberich performs amusing magic tricks--via a convenient trapdoor. Later, he and most of his godly cohorts ascend to the environs of Valhalla via the ubiquitous ladder (don’t ask how they get from the sunroof to the nearby castle, for there is no rainbow bridge). The shrewish Mrs. Wotan, a.k.a. Fricka, rises skyward with the aid of an exclusive cable car.

During the climactic final tableaux, Rochaix ignores Wagner’s instructions (what else is new?) and brings back the entire cast.

As the smug gods bask in anticipated triumph, the Rheinmaidens wander about below, in disarray and discontent. Alberich stalks the boards ominously. His curious brother, Mime, pops out of the trapdoor to observe the action. One giant--here an ordinary, bumbling member of the Shavian working class--lugs off huge sacks of gold while the other lies dead, center stage. The mock-effete Loge smirks while perched midway up a ladder that he intends to climb no further.

In this single moment, the director and designer impeccably, even wittily, define each character and his or her predicament in this mighty, convoluted saga. It is a bold and brilliant coup de theatre .

One hopes it bodes well.

Musically, there was little room for controversy Saturday. A traditionalist might argue that Manuel Rosenthal, conducting his first “Ring” at the age of 82, stresses lyric transparency at the expense of dramatic fervor. One also might complain that the orchestra sounds thin and sometimes flabby. But the singing of a generally unspoiled, youthful cast is remarkably strong, and the Seattle Opera House acoustic is flattering even to the smaller voices.

Roger Roloff returns as an incisive, mellow-toned, untiring Wotan who no longer has to do double duty as stage director. Diane Curry remains his lush-sounding, tough-looking Frau.

Julian Patrick sings--really sings!--Alberich, although Emile Belcourt resorts to clever Sprechgesang as Loge. Geraldine Decker brings a dark, slightly unsteady contralto to Erda’s warning.

The junior gods are deftly portrayed by Diane Kesling (a mezzo turning soprano?) as a radiant Freia, George Gray as a sweetly stentorian Froh and John Del Carlo, who masters a small hammer and a big voice as Donner. The exceptionally mellifluous Rhine-hussies are Karol Hansen, Shirley Harned and Alexandra Hughes. The imposing giants in overalls are a black basso, James Patterson, and a gray basso, Gregory Stapp. Hubert Delamboye introduces a properly pathetic Mime.

In the long run, the Seattle “Ring” may appeal more to the ear than to the eye. Even so, it won’t be boring. They haven’t been able to say anything like that lately in Bayreuth.