Perhaps opera may do better to step out of the velvet corsets and Romantic sets, and bring the medium into the 21st century. The question burns, however: is it sacrilege to bring the likes of Verdi into the realm of a Pink Floyd laser show? Revisions of opera has seen far less enthusiastic reception than similar re-workings of Shakespeare. Are opera fans simply too die-hard, or is there something intrinsic about the vibrato craft that makes its antiquity timeless?

That protectionist sentiment probably accounted for the vehement booing that greeted the director Luc Bondy and his production team when the Metropolitan Opera introduced its new staging of Puccini’s “Tosca” on Sept. 21. The show is no Eurotrash outrage. Mr. Bondy does not even update the setting, let alone turn things surreal or present the story of Tosca, a famed prima donna; her hotheaded rebel lover, Mario Cavaradossi; and the twisted chief of police, Baron Scarpia, as a rehearsal of a modern-day opera company’s “Tosca” production.

The problems arose, it would seem, because for all its contemporary trappings, the production was essentially traditional. So even little deviations from the source seemed like a self-conscious attempt by Mr. Bondy to shake up “Tosca” and rattle “Tosca” lovers.

Now, for an unabashedly avant-garde approach to a staple, there is the Los Angeles Opera’s new production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, directed by Achim Freyer, which is being introduced in installments, so far to mixed reactions. I saw “Die Walküre” last spring and will attend the recently opened “Siegfried” on Wednesday. (“Götterdämmerung” arrives in April, and three complete cycles will be presented in May and June.)

Mr. Freyer, a German theater artist, painter and director, who is overseeing all aspects of the production, tries to capture the magical elements of this mythological tale through weirdly abstract costumes, sets and staging. Characters wield neon spears that look like Jedi light sabers. Alien creatures descend from above and infiltrate the action, a lot of which is not depicted, so that Mr. Freyer can delve into Jungian resonances.

When the long-separated twins Siegmund and Sieglinde meet during Act I of “Die Walküre” (Plácido Domingo and Anja Kampe in the performance I attended), they are surreal, half-complete figures: Siegmund’s face is painted white on one side, black on the other; Sieglinde’s, in reverse. Rather than falling helplessly into a sensual embrace, for long stretches of the act the two are sequestered atop small platforms on opposite sides of the stage, facing forward, seldom looking at each other.

I terribly miss the human dimensions of the characters in this sci-fi “Ring.” After all, Wagner meant for us to see ourselves in this story of a tormented, overreaching god and his dysfunctional family.

But say what you will, Mr. Freyer has a strong production concept, which he conveys through elaborate, sometimes dazzling and very expensive imagery and stage effects (costing more than $32 million). The lesson seems clear: If you decide to go with a concept, stick with it.

No similarly strong take emerges in Mr. Bondy’s convoluted “Tosca,” which replaces the Met’s lavishly realistic Franco Zeffirelli production. At least Mr. Zeffirelli’s popular show had luxurious style, something you can’t say of Mr. Bondy’s anti-Zeffirelli staging, with its cold, spare, emaciated sets.

Mr. Bondy seemed determined to show what a sexually sadistic monster Scarpia is. Actually, I have never seen a production of “Tosca” in which Scarpia’s lechery and ruthlessness has not been utterly evident. The bigger challenge for a director is to convey Scarpia’s other side, the aristocratic bearing and courtly manners that he can turn on as the occasion demands.

A similar problem afflicts many productions of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” Determined to show Giovanni as a reprobate who runs through women, directors fail to convey his high-born swagger and rakish charm.

It is understandable that a director might want to clear out the theatrical clichés that have attached to a classic, even to the point of discounting stage directions. But if the production is essentially traditional, that director had better come up with compelling alternative action.

Take the ending of Act II in the new “Tosca.” When Scarpia makes his proposition — if Tosca will succumb to him just once, he will retract Mario’s death sentence and set the lovers free — she is forced into the unthinkable: she must kill him.

As the music, the stage directions and what we have learned about Tosca so far in the opera all suggest, she stabs Scarpia in a fit of desperation and will. This comes through in the vehement phrases she sings as Scarpia dies, affirming, almost in an existential rant, what she has done: “This is Tosca’s kiss!” “Look at me! It is I, Tosca, O Scarpia!”

But in Mr. Bondy’s staging, Tosca (the charismatic soprano Karita Mattila) plots the murder, albeit quickly. Devising an entrapment for Scarpia, she reclines, alluringly, on a couch, the knife hidden behind her, awaiting her prey. That Tosca would be so calculating at this moment seems all wrong. There I go, sounding like an opera fanatic saying, “Tosca would not do that.” But directors like Mr. Bondy drive you to it.

Then, as the stage directions indicate, during a long span of eerily subdued orchestral music Tosca enacts a ritual, placing candles on either side of Scarpia’s body and a crucifix on his heart. This theatrical stroke is clearly too familiar and melodramatic for Mr. Bondy.

Instead, he has Ms. Mattila climb to the threshold of a window, where she considers leaping to her death. But she collects herself and slinks onto a couch next to the one over which Scarpia’s body is sprawled. As the curtain falls, she appears to be musing on what has happened and what to do next.

What of the candles and crucifix? That Tosca is a devout believer is central to her character. Yes, she is having an affair with Mario, which is technically a sin. But Tosca has a deeply personal relationship with the Madonna. They speak woman to woman. Tosca is an artist; she cannot follow norms. She is sure that the Madonna understands this.

So when Tosca kills Scarpia, even though he was evil, she must both expiate her sin and enact a sacred ritual for his sorry soul. A director who ignores this staging idea, the work of another production team (Puccini and his librettists), had better have a brilliant substitute. “Should I kill myself?” hardly qualifies.

Many opera directors have revealed fresh insights into works through the simple device of updating. Updating has gotten a bad rap. Shifting a story to another era can easily seem a glib and arbitrary maneuver. But done with imagination, an updated production can take today’s audiences to the core of a familiar work. Jonathan Miller’s inspired production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” for example, first presented at the English National Opera in 1982.

Mr. Miller relocates the story from 16th-century Mantua to Little Italy in Manhattan in the 1950s. The Duke of Mantua becomes a powerful, preening head of a Mafia gang. And in an ingenious stroke, Rigoletto, Verdi’s hunchbacked court jester, who must keep the Duke and his entourage amused and be the butt of jokes, becomes the bartender at the gang’s favorite hangout.

One of the stated missions of Peter Gelb as general manager of the Met is to entice new audiences into the opera house with boldly theatrical productions. But who is the target audience for this muddled half-and-half “Tosca,” no experiment in audacious modern theater?

Joseph Volpe, Mr. Gelb’s predecessor, took more risks in recruiting directors than he is generally given credit for, though mainly with operas of second-tier popularity. Robert Wilson’s boldly abstract staging of Wagner’s “Lohengrin” was booed on opening night in 1998 but cheered the next season, after audiences had adjusted to the look and concept of the work, and after the cast’s original stylized hand and arm gestures had been toned down considerably. Herbert Wernicke’s wondrous fairy-tale staging of Strauss’s “Frau Ohne Schatten” remains one of my all-time favorite Met shows. Other standouts included Jürgen Flimm’s production of Beethoven’s “Fidelio,” placed in some vaguely contemporary repressive state, and Francesca Zambello’s elegantly mystical rendering of Berlioz’s “Troyens.”

But for the bread-and-butter works, like “La Bohème” “Turandot,” “La Traviata” and, yes, “Tosca,” Mr. Volpe wanted productions from which the Met could get some mileage and pack in audiences even when the casts were routine. This usually meant ordering up another Zeffirelli extravaganza.

Maybe you can mock Mr. Volpe’s realism, but he knew what he was talking about. Maybe this season’s stagings of Rossini’s “Armida” by Mary Zimmerman’ or Pierre Audi’s production of Verdi’s “Attila,” are a venture, so what? Opera fans are not about to have their hearts broken by re-interpretations of these pieces. The Met, however, has quite the disappointing burden to carry with Mr. Bondy’s “Tosca”.

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My Take: What ever happened to “go big or go home”? The reason so many Shakespeare plays have been successfully adapted is largely the directors’ dedication to the theme. The first example to rise in my mind is the Romeo + Juliet with Claire Danes and Leonardo diCaprio. Baz Luhrmann was dedicated to vintage-inspired, southern California street violence that it completely sold the world. Had Luhrmann merely half-done Verona Beach, the movie would have been less a gut-wrenching tear jerker, and more of a snooze.

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