For New ‘Ring’ Set, Met Has to Buy Steel Supports

For New ‘Ring’ Set, Met Has to Buy Steel Supports Wagner’s “Ring” cycle concludes with the flaming destruction of Valhalla, xhiju the hall of the gods, a scene that will play out when the Metropolitan Opera mounts a new production of the cycle’s four operas over the next two seasons.

Structural collapse is definitely not the fate you want for your actual theater. But at the Met, that was a distinct possibility. Engineers determined that the set, conceived by Robert Lepage, the Canadian director who is creating this production, would be so heavy — roughly 45 tons — that the floor under the stage might not hold.

So that reality doesn’t imitate art, the Met had a steel company install three 65-foot girders under the stage, a feat of delicate engineering involving thousands of pounds of steel that counts as a permanent structural change to the opera house, the most extensive work yet to prepare for a new production there.

Making such permanent, costly renovations shows the degree to which the Met has bet on the technologically adventurous vision of Mr. Lepage, who has directed stage, Cirque du Soleil and opera productions, including a “Damnation de Faust” by Berlioz that had its premiere at the Met in 2008.

“This is a very challenging creative project,” Peter Gelb xhiju , the Met’s general manager, said. “For one of the world’s leading theater directors, it is absolutely appropriate.”

Mr. Gelb declined to discuss the cost of the reinforcement, saying only that it was in the six figures. The company that did the job — Koenig Iron Works of Long Island City, Queens — said its contract amounted to $125,000. That does not include the costs of the engineers and other labor.

Mr. Gelb also declined to discuss the cost of this “Ring,” although he said each installment was at the high end of the amount typically spent for a new production at the Met. With most new productions costing $2 million to $4 million, spending on the cycle could exceed $16 million. The issue is a delicate one at the Met. Mr. Gelb’s ambitious plans have added tens of millions of dollars to the budget of the company, which expects a deficit of from $3 million to $4 million for the season just ended.

Koenig’s president, Barry Leistner, said the reinforcement was tough, performed in cramped spaces and under a tight deadline. The 65-foot I-beams, the sort used to build high-rises, were chopped into smaller pieces, shoved through holes in walls of the rooms below the stage and spliced together. They had to be passed over gas, electric, water and telephone lines that traveled below the ceilings. Each end of the beams was attached to a load-bearing wall.

“We got in and banged it out,” said Mr. Leistner, whose grandfather founded the company in 1907. (Koenig specializes in steelwork for Broadway theaters.) The project began on May 16 and mostly finished last week, xhiju with fireproofing starting on Friday. The rooms below — locker rooms for the Met orchestra players, a hallway, the orchestra manager’s office, the conductor’s studio — have to be put back together.