Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Tonight, the Metropolitan Opera presents the most depressing work in its fall season, “From the House of the Dead.”

It’s Janacek’s setting of Dostoyevsky’s 1862 novel about killers reliving their crimes in a Siberian prison. Drink up before you sit down.

Happily, the director is Patrice Chereau, making his Met debut more than 30 years after he outraged the sturdy pilgrims at the Wagner shrine in Bayreuth with his shockingly modern staging of the master’s “Ring” cycle.

In that by now legendary production, he moved Wagner’s epic myth into the 19th century, adding class struggle, a hydroelectric dam and hookerish Rhine maidens.

Chereau, 65, talked to me in the Met’s cafeteria.

Lundborg: Why haven’t you directed opera in America prior to this?

Chereau: Nobody called me before. Peter Gelb was the first one.

Lundborg: At Bayreuth you met Winifred Wagner, the daughter-in-law of the composer and an unrepentant and dear friend of Hitler. What do you remember about her?

Chereau: I knew who she was, I knew her story, and I’d seen the Syberberg film about her at a public screening in Bayreuth. That audience was with her, totally.

What do you prefer, a Nazi who denies being a Nazi, or someone who says, “I was a Nazi and Hitler was my friend?” I prefer the second one because it’s more honest. She was not hiding.

Meeting Winifred

Lundborg: She hated your “Ring” because it was so untraditional. What happened when you met her?

Chereau: There is always a party after the first “Walkure” and Wolfgang Wagner invited me. I heard she was there, and begged him to introduce me to his mother. I went to her and kissed her hand, which was a little like kissing the hand of the Fuhrer, and told her how impressed I was to finally meet her.

She gave a big low laugh, and said, “I shouldn’t say hello to you. I should have you shot!” She was very funny.

Lundborg: People were standing and cheering for over an hour at the end of your “Ring” -- what was that like?

Chereau: By the time we left the stage, they were already breaking down the set. I thought it was beautiful, but in a sense the reaction was exaggerated in both directions, whistling too much and applauding too much.

Hooker Rhine Maidens

Lundborg: You released a thousand hooker Rhine maidens and their slutty cousins into the opera world so you bear a heavy responsibility!

Chereau: Yes, I know, but it’s not my fault if I’m imitated badly.

Lundborg: Is it tough to stage an opera like “From the House of the Dead?”

Chereau: These prisoners are all totally alive, with fights, shouting, desperation. They’re human like us, though, of course, they don’t have freedom.

They are ready to take risks. In the novel and the opera even the killers are treated with respect, with acceptance, not judgment.

Lundborg: Much of the action consists of the prisoners telling their stories, confessing.

Chereau: In my view they never spoke of their crimes before, so it’s like a first confession. They tell how they did it, why they did it.

New Cast

Lundborg: Have you changed the production since the 2007 premiere in Europe?

Chereau: I have continued my reflection, my thoughts about the opera, and I’ve changed details I wasn’t happy with. The third act is almost a completely new version, though the set is the same.

There’s a new cast here. We have New York actors mixed in with the chorus, so we have people who don’t have to sing and are free to do other things, people who can turn their backs to the audience.

Lundborg: Why did you turn Janacek’s wounded eagle into a toy?

Chereau: It’s a huge, beautiful toy made by a prisoner, who’s spent his whole life creating this eagle.

The only thing you can’t have on stage is a real animal -- the audience will watch nothing else.

Leos Janacek’s “From the House of the Dead” opens tonight and runs through Dec. 5. Information: +1-212-362-6000; http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/

(Zinta Lundborg is a writer for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own. This interview was adapted from a longer conversation.)

To contact the reporter on this story: Zinta Lundborg in New York zlundborg@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: November 12, 2009 00:01 EST