BOOS, BRAVOS FOR POST-MOD ‘RING’ AT THE SEATTLE OPERA

Manuel Rosenthal took a bow in the pit of the darkened Opera House just before the beginning of the third act of “Siegfried.” All conductors of the sprawling “Ring” tetralogy get ovations. Rosenthal got a super-ovation.

The little man deserved it--for sheer endurance, if nothing else.

Wagner’s convoluted, mystical and mythological cycle does go on and on--for nearly 17 heavily orchestrated hours--and it makes severe demands on the man in the pit. After a session or two at these intensely cultish marathons, uplifted and bleary-eared audiences sometimes tend to confuse the conductor with the composer.

Rosenthal, in any case, is not your everyday garden-variety “Ring” conductor. He is 82 and, perhaps worse, French. He doesn’t speak a word of German.

Until this month, he had never conducted the “Ring.” Until a few months ago, when he agreed to replace an ailing colleague, he thought he never would.

Aficionados weren’t much concerned whether Rosenthal could conduct the “Ring” well. They were simply amazed that he could conduct it at all. Shades of that infernal dancing dog. . . . An innocent outsider, wandering in at this moment, would have thought that Rosenthal’s ovation reflected general euphoria. But after the inevitable applause comes a pause, a passage of silence that anticipates the rise of the curtain (if there is a curtain; there isn’t in Seattle). A gentleman in the audience took advantage of this silence to utter a terse, carefully worded comment.

“It stinks!” he yelled. Fortissimo.

A few sympathizers applauded the self-appointed critic. A few antagonists hissed.

A second voice volunteered a muffled response. Mezzo-forte. Some thought the gentleman said, “Get another ‘Ring of the Nibelung.’ ” Others thought he said, “Get out if you don’t like it.”

It was that sort of a night at the opera.

Speight Jenkins, general director of the Seattle Opera, had brought a new vision of the operatic Rhine to Puget Sound. It was bold, contradictory and provocative.

Apart from a few bows to the dramatic concoctions introduced by Patrice Chereau at Bayreuth in the 1970s, this was a “Ring” without obvious antecedents. It was bound to annoy conservatives, confuse neophytes and delight those who embrace the avant-garde for its own odd sake.

Rosenthal wasn’t the controversial force in this enterprise. Many in the audience adored everything about his contribution. Some iconoclasts--this one, for instance--lamented the pervasive absence of weight and grandeur, the softening of climactic accents, the ubiquitous stress upon transparency, the lack of idiomatic vocal phrasing, the orchestral problems involving pitch and precision.

Still, one had to admire the old man’s audacity, the saving grace of his professionalism and his ability to keep things moving against the odds.

The controversial forces in this “Ring,” without question, were Francois Rochaix, the director, and Robert Israel, the designer. Neither had dealt with the monstrous work before. One could tell.

Rochaix and Israel braved choruses of boos every night when they came before the curtain at the end of the opera. They took it like men.

In Germany, where a trend called Regietheater long ago consigned the “outdated” wishes of composer and librettist to a stupid oblivion, the Rochaix-Israel “Ring” would cause little agitation. Germany, after all, has seen Siegfried portrayed as L’il Abner, Valhalla as an outpost in “Star Wars” and the Valkyrie maidens as leather-clad lesbians on motorcycles.

America, however, has never been particularly receptive to operatic reinterpretation and modernization. America has never taken the drama in opera very seriously. Seattle, which saw its first “Ring” only a decade ago, was accustomed to an el cheapo approximation of a literal tradition.

That tradition accommodated comfy caricatures: impassioned sopranos who screamed their Ho-jo-to-hos in fake breast-plated finery, repulsive villains who hid under horny helmets, bearded baritones who crawled around the stage pretending to be dwarfs, would-be heroes who wore bear skins as corsets, old-fashioned painted canvases that pretended to depict rocky heights and watery depths.

Rochaix and Israel knew they could not play those hoary theatrical games with conviction, much less validity, in 1986. Unfortunately, their alternative solution to the fantastic problems inherent in staging the “Ring” created its own vexations.

The premise seemed remotely convincing when one read it. It went something like this:

Wagner created his own rules, then broke them. So did Wotan. Ergo, Wotan is Wagner, and the “Ring” is an opera within an opera.

The time fluctuates, according to whim and narrative implication, from the late 1800s--when the “Ring” was created--to eternity.

The place fluctuates, according to scenic convenience, from Wotan/Wagner’s study (a side stage) to a setting defined by ancient props and theatrical artifacts that, in Brechtian context, are seldom what they seem.

This, without question, is a thinking-man’s “Ring.” Unfortunately, with its barrage of eccentricities, enigmas, gimmicks and inconsistencies, this “Ring” often makes one want to think too much. Or, more dangerous, too little.

It is possible that exigencies of time and finance precluded an ideal realization of the director and designer’s intentions. It is probable that some of the obvious blemishes could be minimized with different casting or better mechanical resources. Still, it must be admitted that much of this production trivializes the source, that many effects misfire and that sights frequently contradict sounds.

The “Ring” is complicated enough as Wagner wrote it. Rochaix and Israel have, in many instances, made it more complicated.

The “Ring” is silly enough as Wagner wrote it. Rochaix and Israel have, in many instances, made it more silly.

There is no Rhine in “Rheingold.” Seattle gives us symbolism instead: miles and billowy miles of blue fabric, flung over ever-present steps and nearby structures. The erstwhile semi-mermaids have become floozies in bloomers (shades of Chereau). Wotan & Co. sport Victorian finery which makes the chief god’s once-noble, now frowzy Frau Fricka resemble Augusta Tabor. The erstwhile giants are common laborers (shades of the Shavian working class).

At the end, everyone except Fricka climbs up a ladder to the top of a quasi-Grecian pavilion that presumably is the rainbow-stop en route to Valhalla. The stuffy goddess with a bustle ascends alone in a convenient gondola attached to the giants’ crane.

So far, so strange.

In “Die Walkuere,” which had been given a solo preview last summer, Siegmund and Sieglinde are members of the prosaic proletariat who consummate their blossoming love on a piece of Astroturf decorated with stuffed geese. Last year there was an adorable stuffed fawn, but Bambi has since been banished to a minor role.

Bruennhilde--a very, very generously proportioned Bruennhilde--inhabits a strange tower equipped with all manner of pulleys, wheels and other useless gizmos. Last year she made the mistake of allowing herself to be plopped down onto the stage via Peter Pan wires during the vital “Annunciation of Death” episode. This year she takes the back stairs.

The Valkyries bob, carrousel style, while riding plastic horses. It is an amusing sight that draws disruptive laughs and cheers from the audience--and obliterates the power and urgency of Wagner’s music.

The finale takes place in Wotan’s attic, a messy jumble of props that include a tipped-over playhouse, a huge table, some gas jets for fire, a marble slab for Bruennhilde’s temporary napping place, a piece of canvas adorned with pictures of rocks and, yes, Bambi. This scene, we are told, represents the end of order in Wotan’s universe and, in effect, the end of time.

Luckily, it also signals the end of the opera.

In “Siegfried,” the superman-hero makes an unfortunate entrance yanking a live--repeat, live--bear cub on a leash. The audience oohs and aahs and applauds, obliterating Siegfried’s crucial introductory phrases.

One wondered why Seattle would give us plastic horses, stuffed birds and a taxidermic deer but a real bear. A company spokesman provided the answer: All the other characters play by the old rules; they use Wotan’s props. But Siegfried is a loner. He breaks the rules. If he needs a bear, he gets a bear.

That may explain why he later knocks down the scenic flats that are supposed to represent the forest. It does not explain why he slays a “dragon” that takes the form of three giant crab’s legs before turning back into a basso dressed like a workman (shades of Chereau). Nor does it explain why the telltale forest bird should be a stuffed parrot on a pole, carried about the stage by a pretty girl. But we digress.

When Bruennhilde wakes up (not a moment too soon), she is no longer in Wotan’s attic. She is in a nice, Grecian mausoleum. She greets the sun before a starry, nocturnal, interplanetary backdrop--the same one that returns for her Immolation Scene.

When Siegfried gets ardent, she hides part of her ample frame behind the gray curtain on which her protective fire had been projected. When Siegfried finally wins her trust as well as her body, he dives, with her, beneath that curtain. The image lends new meaning to the concept of anticlimax .

“Goetterdaemmerung” casts the all-knowing Norns as old Victorian biddies who busy themselves winding an invisible rope of fate. Gunther the top-hatted Gibichung dresses as if he were on the way to Ascot (shades of Chereau). When the befuddled Siegfried comes a-courtin’, Gutrune dons a white wedding dress that she must have borrowed from Baby Doe. Waltraute swoops down from Valhalla and tries, in vain, to sound desperate and passionate while swaying gently on her merry-go-round nag.

The worst comes in what should be the mightiest of denouements. Bruennhilde lights a real--repeat, real--torch and tosses it on the funeral pyre. Then she leads her steed-on-wheels to the central junk heap, a rummage sale from Wotan’s attic stock.

As if they had strayed from some demented Noh play, dancers bearing enormous red streamers run in circles around the pyre, eventually leaving it in a tangle of fabric. Someone turns on the dry-ice machine. That is supposed to mean fire.

Then the blue curtains descend--remember “Rheingold”?--and cover up all the red stuff. That is supposed to mean water.

The Rhine floozies return, claim the ring from Siegfried’s tuxedoed corpse, and strike poses amid the billowing cloth “waves.” Stationed on a platform in the middle, Woglinde raises her hand in triumph and looks for all the world like the Statue of Liberty.

Wotan is dead by now so he can’t function as observer, participant or stage director. Nasty old Alberich--a.k.a. Sweeney Todd--comes out instead for a final, ominous cringe while the orchestra rapturously sings of redemption through love.

Don’t ask me why.

Not everything is as risible as all this must sound.

Rochaix certainly is good at getting his singers to act. He often defines character and mood tensely, economically and tellingly.

Israel has vivid ideas and is blissfully unencumbered with respect for the dark and dusty past.

These dauntless men of the theater have given us a wild, brash, thoughtful, perversely fascinating sketch of a post-mod “Ring.”

Too bad it doesn’t work.

At the first of Seattle’s two cycles (Aug. 2 through 7), the generally young and inexperienced cast blissfully belied the notion that no one can sing Wagner anymore.

Roger Roloff tired a bit as the marathon progressed and is still more a lyric than a dramatic baritone. Nevertheless, he brought exceptional fervor, clarity and, where possible, dignity to the dreaded duties of Wotan.

Linda Kelm sang the music of Bruennhilde with such unflagging power, such ease and such luster that one almost forgave her generalized emoting, and one almost forgot about her obesity. Almost.

Although she looked more like her stage twin’s mother than sister (and although she has graduated elsewhere to the more demanding duties of Bruennhilde), Johanna Meier attended to the plight of Sieglinde with vocal savoir-faire, ardor and warmth.

The villains were splendidly represented by Julian Patrick as a crusty bel-canto Alberich, Hubert Delamboye as a heroically pathetic Mime, John Macurdy as a dull but marvelously black-toned Hagen and James Patterson as a deeply sonorous, oddly sympathetic Fafner.

Diane Curry’s firm and lush mezzo-soprano could be admired in the music of Waltraute and the Second Norn as well as Fricka. Geraldine Decker’s massive contralto has seen steadier days, but she still exuded authority as Erda.

As Gunther, John Del Carlo offered a compelling portrait of a giant-sized weakling, despite some strain at the top of the range. Karen Bureau complemented him as a radiant-sounding Gutrune. Karol Hansen’s limpid soprano attracted special attention in the aquatic trios, and Karen Hall chirped reasonably on behalf of the forest parrot.

As is usually the case in modern “Rings,” Seattle encountered some tenor troubles. Emile Belcourt, a veteran of many “Rheingolds,” resorted resourcefully to ancient Sprechgesang evasions as Loge. Young Warren Ellsworth made dangerously throaty and strenuous sounds as Siegmund, solid vocal equipment notwithstanding. He also mangled the text. As Siegfried, Edward Sooter looked imposing and acted with constant intelligence and urgency (even when his anvil broke prematurely). Like many a Bayreuth predecessor, however, he sounded tight and fuzzy much of the time.

Sonya Friedman provided deft supertitles that often illuminated the drama, frequently distracted attention from the singers and occasionally contradicted the action.

Ruhe, du Gott. . . .