July 27 (Bloomberg) -- A storm of boos greeted the opening operas at both the Salzburg and the Bayreuth Festivals last weekend. High ticket prices -- as much as 360 euros ($437) -- in Salzburg and stratospheric expectations in Bayreuth didn't help. When all was said and done, when singers and conductors had been politely applauded, the direction teams marched onto stage and the audiences responded with the verbal equivalent of the rotten tomato.

Henry Purcell's ``King Arthur,'' a 17th-century semi-opera based on John Dryden's text, could have provided an upbeat start to this year's Salzburg opera season. Gossamer-fine poetry, gentle wit and Britain's best baroque music combine to make the piece a gem, for all its comparative neglect. Yet between them, director Jurgen Flimm, translators Renate and Wolfgang Wiens and conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, have conspired to turn Purcell's confection into an endless evening of heavy-handed pedantry.

Dryden's version of the Arthurian legend has a fair bit in common with Wagner's grail-quest ``Parsifal.'' But his is a more action-packed tale of good Christian Britons at war with bad heathen Saxons. Both King Arthur and his enemy, the evil Oswald, love fair Emmeline. Oswlad, with the aid of his wizard Osmund, kidnaps the blind beauty. Merlin helps Arthur to rescue her and restore her sight. Amid much magic and pageantry, the Saxons are defeated and the Britons live happily ever after.

Dry Ice and Screaming

Flimm's Word War I allusions do not leaven the story. Nor do his myriad hackneyed theater devices, from excessive use of dry ice for the spirits to a tired attack on the wealthy public, complete with spoof usherette and fake latecomer. An almost uncut, awkwardly translated rendition of the dialogue drags interminably, even with a fine cast of actors from Vienna's Burg Theater. The miserable acoustics of the Felsenreitschule (a recycled riding school) meant that they spend all of their time screaming, which does little for clarity of diction.

Most recent stagings of King Arthur have drastically reduced the spoken text, usually with the assistance of a narrator, which helps the music to hang together. In this version, we wait so long between musical numbers that their architecture was lost. Harnoncourt does draw some poignant effects from Purcell's score, though he takes it all so seriously that most of its inherent lightness of touch is lost. He is too busy emphasizing pauses and drawing out rhythmic effects to recall the joyous romp that the piece can be if left to bounce along at its own pace.

Less Scandal, Fewer Thrills

If Salzburg Festival Director Peter Ruzicka wanted any proof that he is a nonentity, he has found it in abundance this summer. His bland leadership is hardly the desired response to the energetically confrontational style of his predecessor, Gerard Mortier. The main conversational topic in Salzburg seems to be who will succeed him in 2007. If there has been less scandal under his direction than there was under Mortier, there has also been less excitement, less money and less to write home about.

At the best of times, Ruzicka, despite his high-profile job, is seldom seen. But he made a rare (if brief) appearance before curtain-up to announce Isabel Rey's indisposition. This was not apparent. Though Barbara Bonney stole the show, with radiant and refined arias, Rey's performance was impressive, Oliver Widmer and Birgit Remmert also sang creditably, and Michael Schade would have been perfect if only the words he had sung had actually sounded like English.

Taking his bow, Flimm feigned a heart attack in response to the first chorus of boos, falling flat on his back on the stage. It was unfunny and immature, like the rest of his production. Along with a dozen or so other candidates, Flimm, currently director of the Salzburg Festival's theater program, is under discussion as a possible successor for Ruzicka. A frightening thought.

No Relief

Those hoping for light relief from the following evening's ``Entfuhrung aus dem Serail'' were in for a disappointment. Stefan Herheim has dramatically revised his staging of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's comedy since its premiere last year, and both cast and conductor have changed, though not all the alterations are for the better.

The good news is Julia Jones on the podium, in every way an improvement on Ivor Bolton last year. Jones's Mozart is fleet, light-footed, sensitive and subtle. She listens to her singers and builds her structures with beautiful clarity. All the love, joy and humanity so conspicuously absent from Herheim's production are there to hear.

Thank goodness: without them it'd be a grim evening. Herheim has honed and chiseled his production to send his basic message with renewed clarity. Marriage is misery, men and women will always be enemies, domesticity is hell. There's no Seraglio, no Bassa Selim, no abduction, no escape -- this is an entirely internal battle of conscience, played out by a cast of clones in wedding dresses and tails. It has almost nothing to do with the piece that Mozart wrote.

Lectures on Gender

This is Herheim's theater on the subject of fidelity and relationships, with the music incidentally laced in. Instead of the original dialogue, there are interminable philosophical discussions about identity and gender hierarchies. Yawn.

There are also plenty of precocious kids and some very nifty video work courtesy of fettFilm. Not enough to lift the gloom.

Like a tape loop, Ruzicka appeared once more at curtain-up to announce the indisposition of a lead soprano, this time Regina Schoerg, who should have sung the role of Konstanze. Diana Damrau leaped in to fill the breach, with breathtaking aplomb. You'd never have known she hadn't been on the team from the start.

Unusual though it was to have a Konstanze with a lighter- colored voice than the Blonde (Laura Aikin), the new balance worked well. Damrau's coloratura was clear as glass, Aikin drew unexpected levels of complexity from the usually chirpy role of the English handmaid. Christoph Strehl's Belmonte had aristocratic poise and heroic passion, Dieter Kerschbaum's Pedrillo was an accomplishment of considerable theatrical commitment. None of this saved the evening from its ponderous self-importance or its dreary high- school metaphysics.

Voodoo Wagner

Even more rowdy boos greeted Christoph Schlingensief's much- hyped staging of ``Parsifal'' a few hundred kilometers northeast at the Bayreuth Festival, the summer shrine exclusively devoted to the music of Richard Wagner. In the German eccentric's first-ever opera production, Wagner's tale of Easter redemption became the story of a heathen death cult, complete with a giant projection of a rotting hare.

A hectic abundance of images, from films of seals to fat, semi- naked black fertility goddesses and voodoo rituals kept the first- night audience of stars, politicians and journalists sniggering where reverent silence is generally expected. Klingsor departed in a rocket, Bin Laden appeared in a video, and the Grail was replaced by the blood of the dead goddess.

Despite the enthusiastic boos and inappropriate guffaws, the expected scandal never happened. German papers reported restrained responses, with audience members commenting that the production was ``brave'' and ``full of ideas.'' Nobody stormed out, no doors were slammed.

Singers Hendrik Wottrich (Parsifal), Robert Holl (Gurnemanz) and John Wegner (Klingsor) and Michelle de Young (Kundry) were politely received. At least it wasn't a long night. Conductor Pierre Boulez, who once said that opera houses should be blown up, galloped through the score at record speed, and the audience stopped applauding at the earliest possible opportunity.

Last Updated: July 26, 2004 19:25 EDT