MUSIC: Gods and Gold

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Instead, Kirchner and Rosalie offer what is basically a high-tech light show -- perhaps the trendiest and most threadbare gambit now popular in Europe. Some of the stage pictures are inspired, like the glassy, green, undulating * plates that suggest the forest in Siegfried, but too often the choices seem arbitrary. In addition, Kirchner's stage maneuvers are inept. Time and again the cast is left singing directly to the audience -- just like the bad old days when operas were turned into stiff pageants. Some awkward direction will be corrected next year. Bayreuth stages no new productions of Wagner's other operas during the second year of any Ring cycle, wisely using time and money to make improvements, which can be extensive.

For now, Rosalie overshadows the direction and even the music with stunningly ugly and capricious costumes. At a press conference she explained that since no one has seen a god or a giant or a dragon, she had to create them from her imagination. In fact the sources are painfully clear. Some influences are evidently classical -- warriors all wear plastic breastplates. Unfortunately they suggest Jean-Paul Gaultier's Paris more readily than ancient Athens. More striking are the costumes containing Oriental references. They make the wearers appear larger -- read fatter -- than they are, a particular pity with a fit and youthful-looking cast. The inspiration seems to have come from Issey Miyake, a master at making small figures look grand. Rosalie received her curtain-call boos in an outfit by the Japanese designer, but his magic touch turned out to be untransferable.

The greatest casualty is soprano Deborah Polaski, playing Brunnhilde, especially in Die Walkure. Tall, handsome, heroic in gesture and carriage, she should make an ideal goddess. But with her bulky breastplate and helmet and huge skirt, she looks like the typical porky Wagnerian. The Rhinemaidens are decked out in biker gear, the dwarf Alberich wears one bright green sneaker. A reference to the Green movement? Who knows.

Of the creative trio only Levine trusted his material and worked to burnish it. His Wagner has been criticized for being too slow. Certainly he chooses rapture rather than excitement. In the Festspielhaus, with its marvelous acoustics, every instrument is audible and clear. Under Levine's baton the music seems translucent, and the melodies play themselves. "It is as if I am standing in front of a treasure chest," the conductor says, "and the idea is to draw it all out where the listener can hear it and feel it and get involved in it."

Singers like Levine's spacious pace. Ekkehard Wlaschiha, the excellent Alberich, says that "to sing this music fast, you have to be Superman. Levine fulfills the tempi and he gives you time to phrase -- you can better form a musical arch." Adds Manfred Jung, a properly servile Mime: "It's no secret that the orchestra plays more quietly if the beat is not fast."