“Toto, I’ve got a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!” Says Speight Jenkins of the company’s most controversial production: “Up to this time, all Rings in the United States had either been variations on the early 20th-century German Rings, or in the case of a few recent ones, copies of what Wieland Wagner had created at the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth in 1951. Suddenly on July 28, 1985, an American audience—composed mostly of Seattleites but with many of those who traditionally came from out of town to Ring performances here—saw a new look. Robert Israel’s sets and costumes and François Rochaix’s staging shook the audience out of the opera comfort zone and right into the modern theater.”

The cast was Seattle Ring veterans, with Linda Kelm promoted from Helmwige to Brünnhilde. A fake deer in the Siegmund/Sieglinde love scene provoked much mirth among the audience, who nicknamed it “Bambi;” it would later move to the attic of Valhalla, location of Die Walküre Act Three, the room where Wotan tosses out his old failed ideas. “Bambi” eventually populated this room—as did Brünnhilde.