Calixto Bieito takes on Wagner's Ring Cycle, a quarter century after first shocking audiences

PARIS — Calixto Bieito turned introspective as he sat in a cafe across from the Opéra Bastille, where his production of the first night Wagner's Ring Cycle was to premiere the following day.

''I am full of doubts, but I am convinced,'' he said, equally brash, humble and apprehensive.

Provoking boos 25 years ago for radical stagings saturated with sex and violence, Bieito has transformed at age 61 from European regietheater enfant terrible to prestigious patriarch.

His production of ''Das Rheingold'' that runs through Feb. 19 includes gold represented by cryptocurrency, a thicket of tangled cables and a zombie-like humanoid named Gisela created by Artificial Intelligence.

Donner, the god of thunder, wore a Los Angeles Dodgers cap. Rhinemaidens were attired in blue-and-yellow scuba gear with oxygen tanks. The giant Fafner wore cowboy duds, and Freia, the goddess of love and beauty, smeared herself with oil hoping to be incinerated by Loge, the god of fire. Five television monitors were arranged in the shape of a crucifix in Nibelheim's subterranean chasm; the magic helmet Tarnhelm looked like a Basquiat image, and the ring large enough to fit around the neck like a noose.

After Wotan entered Valhalla as smoke filled the auditorium at the Jan. 29 premiere, the cast and conductor Pablo Heras-Casado were met with applause but the director and his production team skipped the curtain call, leaving the audience response to him unanswered.

Bieito won't take a bow until the full Ring is presented twice in November 2026, knowing he will make changes. A video recording won't take place until then.

''I start very human, not with myths,'' Bieito said. ''I really believe we are living in a moment like when Caligula was saying, `I'm God.′ And then I'm going to build a new mythology.''

Rise to fame — or infamy

Bieito's 1999 staging of Bizet's ''Carmen'' in Perelada, Spain, gained attention for an acgtor strung up a flagpole. His 2000 production of Verdi's ''Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball)'' at Barcelona's Liceu opened with about a dozen men on toilets reading newspapers; a 2001 version of Mozart's ''Don Giovanni'' featuring a coke-snorting Don Juan and was booed at the English National Opera on opening night.

A 2004 staging of Mozart's ''Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio)'' at Berlin's Komische Oper included Osmin, the pasha's overseer, seeming to slice off a woman's nipple and a prostitute drinking urine.

''When I did `Carmen,′ people were hating me,'' Bieito said. ''I had to leave some restaurants because people were shouting.''

His works have since appeared in most major European houses.

''He comes in with a less-established concept and really develops much more in the room,'' Paris Opéra general director Alexander Neef said. ''What he was initially planning on doing can change quite significantly.''

A project that began a decade ago

Bieito had gotten struck in Paris traffic, taking a car across town rather than the Métro because he is claustrophobic. In his usual black shirt, head shaven, shoulders slightly hunched, he explained the production's gestation.

He was commissioned for Wagner's four-opera ''Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung)'' in 2015 and was in rehearsals for an April 2020 opening when the the coronavirus pandemic shuttered the house. Bieito changed many of his ideas by the time a new cast gathered last December, influenced by James Bridle's book ''New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future.'' The AI machines developed in ''Rheingold'' will cause war in "Die Walküre," nature will rebel in ''Siegfried'' and characters will gather in a Wagnerian-period living room as consciousness disappears into a black hole in ''Götterdämmerung.''

He visited moors near Haworth in Britain, home of the Brontë family, to find his mood for the Ring.

''We are living in a moment where the gods, they don't exist anymore — I'm talking about Western society. The human beings, they believe they are gods,'' he said. ''We are creating a machine ourselves. We are creating god.''

Bieito, who was born in Miranda de Ebro, near Spain's Basque region, was influenced by a Jesuit education and lives in Basel, Switzerland, where he was artist in residence at Theater Basel from 2013-15. Stéphane Lissner, Neef's predecessor, hired Bieito for the Ring after seeing him direct Shakespeare's ''King Lear.''

''If I had to describe his work during rehearsals, the three words, they would be freedom, intensity and artistic personal responsibility,'' said Bettina Auer, a dramaturg who has worked with Bieito since 2009.

An influential mentor

Lydia Steier, a American director who moved to Germany in 2002 as a Fulbright Scholar, first met Bieito when she was an assistant stage manager in Berlin during the infamous ''Abduction'' production. She spoke decent Spanish, they bonded in part of what she termed his ''sort of potty humor'' and Steier remained as an assistant when Bieito returned to Berlin for Puccini's ''Madama Butterfly'' in 2005. She was promoted to his choreographer for Wagner's ''Die Fliegende Holländer'' and Rameau's ''Platée'' in Stuttgart.

''The reason that I decided to become a director and stay in Europe in general was `The Abduction from the Seraglio,‘'' Steier said. ''Without bending or breaking the music, he made it mean something completely different and incandescent and modern and necessary.''

Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo said working with Bieito last winter in Thomas Ades' ''The Exterminating Angel'' caused an epiphany

''He never comes in with a preordained plan, which I think is is part of his genius,'' Costanzo said. ''He can see what works and see what doesn't work very well and he nudges you in one direction or the other.''

Interpretations left open — even for the cast

Even singers are left to ponder meanings.

An image of a baby at the final notes could be Siegmund, Siegfried or Hagen.

Brian Mulligan, the bass-baritone who portrays Alberich, asked Bieito whether the feet shown in the opening projection belong to his character.

''He laughed," Mulligan related, his voice rising in a sing-song, "and said, `Maybe they are.'''