Opera: A Freudian Ring

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The Valkyries wear shimmering, skin-tight leather. Gigantic musclemen hammer each other like wrestlers.

Bare-breasted Rhinemaidens (an effect achieved by body stockings tipped in rubber at the critical points) fondle an oversexed dwarf.

Wieland Wagner, grandson of the great man, mounted his first Wagnerian revolution when he took over the Bayreuth Festival 14 years ago, sweeping away the antiquated Teutonic gods, winged helmets and papier-mache shields from the ponderous, four-opera Ring cycle in favor of a treatment as stark and simple as Greek tragedy. Last week Bayreuth audiences were witnessing Wieland's second thoughts and second revolution. He had recast the Ring in the latter-day terms of Jung and Freud. "I wanted to show how many archetypic, primordial, age-old and yet permanently renewing elements of mankind are contained in my grandfather's tetralogy," says Wieland, "and secondly, to prove it is a crime story and chiller of the first order—blood, murder and sex, with more surprise and suspense than a James Bond thriller."

Killer & Astronaut. In Wieland's revised version, he visualized Alberich and Wotan as archetypes of "wheeler-dealer politicians," the heroes Siegfried and Siegmund as self-sacrificing astronauts, the Rhinemaidens as the bosses' sexy secretaries, Wotan's wife Fricka as everybody's nagging mother-in-law, Fafner and Fasolt as Murder Inc.'s cold blooded killers, Briinnhilde as a man's best pal, the temptress Gutrune as a call girl.

Wieland also revised the scenery. Grandpa's gods and goddesses journey toward their Gotterdümmerung through abstract-mobile backgrounds created by light projections with only the minimum of necessary realism: an oppressive Mycenaean Valhalla and a Gibichungen hall studded with hundreds of bleached animal skulls. A cast headed by Birgit Nilsson, Wolfgang Windgassen, Theo Adam, James King, Anja Silja, Lili Chookasian and Leonie Rysanek responded to Wieland's direction with magnificent singing. Under the baton of Conductor Karl Boehm, the orchestra became accompaniment and comment, echo and counterpoint of each gesture onstage.

The result, by general agreement, was the most exciting interpretation of the Nibelungen legend ever. The usually reserved audience in Bayreuth's red brick Festspielhaus stamped and cheered till the rafters shook. Munich's conservative Siiddeutsche Zeitung described the production as "a truly sensational feat of music and stagecraft, which surpassed one's highest expectations. A pace-setting event in the history of opera."

Unwanted Praise. Wieland Wagner has worked hard to whitewash the shrine that was erected in 1872 by Richard Wagner to himself. He feels that his grandfather's genius has triumphed over the unwanted critical interpretation from Adolf Hitler, who once observed: "Whoever wants to understand National Socialist Germany must know Wagner."

"Grandfather's music had always attracted a mentally perverted fringe and those in search of ersatz sex," Wieland says. "But even though the sensual character of his music still drives his fans to semi-craziness, those who seek his sex and not his soul get an incomplete experience."