A dozen children dangle listlessly on swings hanging from long ropes in the rigging loft of the Vienna State Opera.
The water below them, which is reflected in the background, doesn't seem to bother them much - because their eyes are blindfolded.
It is not a funny blind man's bluff that Spanish director Calixto Bieito presents at the beginning of the first act of Richard Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde", but a disturbing metaphor for the unconscious that lies dormant in every individual.
We think we are on safe ground because we don't see the abysses to which the human psyche is exposed throughout life.
Why this picture caused such a stir in the run-up to the premiere remains a mystery.
In any case, after the boos during the dress rehearsal, the State Opera director Bogdan Roščić stepped in front of the curtain to draw the audience's attention before the start of the second act that they should express their dissatisfaction in the regular performances, but not in a rehearsal, in order not to avoid the artists to unsettle.
So no booing ban, as originally rumored by the Viennese daily press, but a reminder to let the singers work in peace.
Bayreuth can look forward to an exciting Siegfried
However, it was not a harmonious premiere.
Apparently director Calixto Bieito touched the Viennese heart painfully because he tells Wagner's opera as a meeting of two severely traumatized people: Isolde is beside herself because the very man who beheaded her fiancé was chosen as her groomsman, and Tristan never gets rid of the feeling of guilt for causing his mother's death at birth.
By focusing on these traumas, Bieito changes the view of the two main characters.
Tristan, who initially crawls and rolls through the ankle-deep water on Rebecca Ringst's symbolically open stage, is by no means a radiant hero, but a broken one, a hunted one.
And Isolde sparks a real furor in the first act because she has seen through Tristan's cover and knows who is leading her to King Marke.
Andreas Schager and Martina Serafin, the two Austrian singers in the title roles, put up a gripping fight.
With very different means: Serafin's soprano voice has become more voluminous over the years, but no less shrill in the highs.
The uncertain intonation and its flickering vibrato cloud the overall impression.
But the ambivalent revenge/love angel that Bieito may have had in mind, she succeeds convincingly.
Andreas Schager's clearly focused tenor, declamatory reminiscent of great role models, sounds completely different. In the final act, he still manages to master outbursts of strength with the utmost precision and at the same time convey Tristan's inner brokenness vocally.
Bayreuth can look forward to an exciting Siegfried next summer.
The insanely surging duel between the two singers, who appear in today's clothes (costumes: Ingo Krügler), is particularly convincing in the first act. When the conflict then suddenly turns to love, Bieito, in his often somewhat rough production, refuses an intimate encounter between the two for a long time.
It is touching when Tristan and Isolde – hovering above the floor in two separate, bourgeois furnished rooms – try in vain to shake hands.
The previously devastated rooms turn out to be steel cages of bourgeois morality, which only allows infidelities in secret.
But when they finally meet each other on two swings, oblivious to themselves, Tristan barely glances at Isolde, even though Wagner's music sounds yearning and yearning.
Everything looks flawless and yet sounds wrong
The message that bourgeois constraints prevent liberated love is conveyed in a similarly striking manner in the third act.
A chain of naked people can be seen in the background, which probably symbolizes the battlements of Kareol Castle on the almost empty stage.
The bleeding Tristan languishes on the ruins of the bourgeois interior, wounded not by Melot's sword but by a knife from his own hand.
As he recalls his death-wishing love, the naked embrace each other tenderly.
If Bieito had dispensed with such demonstrative images in order to instead concentrate on a profound directing of the characters, the ideas he developed from Wagner's text, which were quite plausible, would probably have had more compelling scenic reasons.
However, a coherent musical foundation was also missing.
The State Opera Orchestra, conducted by GMD Philippe Jordan, plays chamber music lucidly, with a soft, sensitive sound and in the crucial passages with full power.
Everything seems flawless and yet sounds wrong: Because Jordan develops neither a sensorium for the ecstasies nor for the abysses of this music.
The ensemble also left a lot to be desired: Brangäne by Ekaterina Gubanova is vocally too weak, flawless in declamation, but King Marke by René Pape seems unusually insecure, pale Melot by Clemens Unterreiner.
Only Iain Paterson as Kurwenal can set distinctive accents alongside the two protagonists.
The organized booing hurricane was only aimed at the leading team.