Following the controversial Walküre presentations the summer before, the company unveiled the rest of the Rochaix/Israel Ring this summer. French conductor Manuel Rosenthal, who had been music director of the Seattle Symphony in the 1940s, returned to Seattle for the first time in four decades to conduct. Despite vociferous push-back from conservative members of the audience, the production would return for three more cycles. Various elements were changed and improved; the Wälsung scene’s “Bambi,” for example, went away, as did the red ribbons in the immolation. The first Fafner (seen here) proved a disappointment. The idea was that the dragon was the size of the Space Needle, and only its foot could be seen through the proscenium arch. One waggish patron called out “We’ve got Crab Legs!” at the first performance—-referring to a well-known contemporary commercial for Sea Galley, a popular Seattle restaurant of the day--and this ‘light comic scherzo’ of the Ring suddenly became funnier than Wagner had intended! Fafner was redesigned for the following summer.