Wagner: Der Ring des Nibelungen. (Video).

WAGNER: Der Ring des Nibelungen

Jones, Altmeyer, Schwarz, Killebrew, Reppel, Wenkel, Sharp, Gramatzki, Schiml, Schnaut, Clarke, Middleton, Glauser; Mclntyre, Hofmann, Jung, Becht, Zednik, Hubner, Salminen, Mazura, Pampuch; Orchestra and Chorus of the Bayreuth Festival, Boulez. Production, Chereau. Philips DVD 070 407-9 [PH7]

In the beginning, there was Wieland Wagner, the composer's genius grandson. Together with his brother Wolfgang, less talented but a fine administrator, he inherited what was left of Bayreuth after World War II. Partly out of financial necessity, partly in response to an inspired personal vision and partly as a negation of the bloated Nazi aesthetic, Wieland literally staged a revolution.

He abandoned fairy-tale realism, balked at pompous ritual, stripped the stage bare and focused on psychological abstraction. Working with powerful singing actors who could convey profound emotion standing still, banishing picturesque props and stereotypical gestures, Wieland isolated modern truths in Romantic mythology. In the process, he often contradicted the letter but never the spirit of his grandfather's musical law. Artistic turmoil followed Wieland's death, at forty-nine, in 1966.

Then came the big moment, the centenary Ring production in 1976. Wolfgang first invited Ingmar Bergman to stage the sprawling cycle, but the Swedish film director declined. So did Peter Brook. Peter Stein, a political zealot, accepted the assignment but made an impossible proviso: Franz Josef Strauss, the arch-conservative Bavarian statesman, must be banned from the premiere. Eventually, Wolfgang reached a surprising decision: he would entrust the celebratory Wagner performances to Ring novices from France. Pierre Boulez, the progressive, super-intellectual composer (who had had his controversial way with Parsifal in Bayreuth a decade earlier) would conduct. The director would be Patrice Chereau, a theater man who claimed his only previous contact with the Ring entailed sleeping through a Walkure in Paris. The designers would be Richard Peduzzi (sets) and Jacques Schmidt (costumes), both operatic virgins. Controversy loomed.

It materialized on an opening night notable for catcalls, whistles and boos. The stodgy Bayreuth public had a good, raucous time rejecting the Gallic infidels. In the pit, Boulez stressed clarity and order above passion and might, offending traditionalists. Onstage, Chereau turned his back on both Richard and Wieland Wagner, deconstructing the libretto while focusing on social and political commentary. For better or worse, this was a modern Ring, a Ring for audiences and artists willing to brush aside preconceptions.

There were mutinies out front and eventually in the performing ranks, too. But yesterday's scandale has a funny way of becoming tomorrow's piece de resistance. And so it was here. Like all Bayreuth productions, this was a work in progress, and it improved from year to year. Chereau refined his production scheme. Peduzzi rethought some of the decors. The audience mellowed. And the cast changed.