A few years back, I saw a "modernized" staging of the Ring Cycle on my local PBS affiliate (Great Performances mini-series? Can't remember).

I find "modernized" stagings of operas to be an abomination, generally springing from some dork's attempt to use someone else's masterpiece to "make a statement."   There oughta be a law!!

Anyway, this particular dork wanted to take Wagner's musical setting of Germanic and Norse myth and use it to make a statement about the evils of the Industrial Revolution. So he had the Nibelungs (dwarfs laboring away in the caves under the evil gnome, Alberich) all wearing hard-hats, safety goggles, and carrying lunch pails. Wotan is still wearing an eye-patch and carrying a spear, but he's traded in the long, flowing black cloak for a frock coat. Siegfried, the somewhat dense Officially Ordained Hero normally wore a bearskin, but in this staging, they had him in a plaid shirt and suspenders.

The music was the same, but visually it was a disaster.   PTUI!!

Don Firth