Audience rolls down tracks during 'Die Soldaten' (AP)

NEW YORK - The opening note of Bernd Alois Zimmermann's "Die Soldaten" has to be the most moving in opera when heard in David Pountney's production: The 974-seat bleacher containing the audience slowly starts to roll down train tracks in the Park Avenue Armory's Drill Hall, passing over a football field-length runway where most of the action takes place.

The innovative staging, first seen at Germany's RuhrTriennale in October 2006, opened Saturday night at the Lincoln Center Festival. It was fascinating.

A complicated 12-tone work, the opera is played by a 110-piece-orchestra, with the main section on the audience's left, a 16-person percussion group on the right and an on-stage jazz band thrown in. To keep the singers coordinated, a dozen video screens showing the conductor were mounted throughout the armory, which resembles a European train station.

When mounted at Bochum's Jahrhunderthalle -- a former gas plant -- the opera unfolded on a narrow stage about 150 yards long. Because the armory is about 30 yards shorter, this stage is a T-shape, and it was lit brilliantly at times in green and pink, transforming from houses to even a dance hall with a stained urinal. The audience moved down the hall at the start of the first act, and then retreated in stages until intermission. After the break, the bleacher remained in place for most of the third and fourth acts before sliding back and forth one more time.

Because of the unusual venue, the singers were right next to the audience, eliminating the usual distance created by a pit and a proscenium stage. It gave the violence more jarring impact. It also gave the sound a chance to float in the large overhead space, sometimes echoing, depending on how far away the audience was.

Based on Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz's 1776 play, the opera has 16 singing and 10 spoken roles. It debuted in Cologne in 1965, was given its U.S. premiere by the Opera Company of Boston in 1982 -- 12 years after Zimmermann committed suicide. The work resurfaced in a New York City Opera production nine years later.

Raw and nihilistic, the opera is about the fall of Marie, the daughter of a French merchant in Lille. She is in love with Stolzius, a cloth merchant, then is seduced by Desportes, a baron in the French military. Marie rejects warnings from her father about soldiers, winds up as the love object of a string of men, is raped and aimlessly walks the streets to brutal amplified music. At the end, her father doesn't recognize her, much as Sweeney Todd fails to comprehend that the beggar woman is his wife. Stolzius, meanwhile, poisons Desportes, then himself.

Most of the cast reprised the roles they sang in Bochum. Soprano Claudia Barainsky starred as Marie, managing the difficult leaps required by the score and the tricky balance between wildness and maintaining the audience's sympathy. Bass Claudio Otelli made a deep impact as Stolzius, and tenor Peter Hoare sang vibrantly as the oily Desportes.

There wasn't a weak spot in the cast. Bass Johann Tilli (Wesener) had an old-work sternness. Soprano Hanna Schwarz (Wesener's mother) and mezzo Kathryn Harries (Stolzius' mother) conveyed the family disfunction with authority. Mezzo Claudia Mahnke showed the vapidness of Charlotte, Marie's whiny sister.

Steven Sloane conducted the Bochum Symphony in an edgy, pulsating performance. The microphones attached the singers were somewhat obtrusive, probably because of the audience's proximity. And at times, the amplification was a bit jarring.

Pountney's staging, Robert Innes Hopkins' sets, Marie-Jeanne Lecca's costumes and Wolfgang Goebbel's lighting all were memorable. There are just four more performances through July 12.

Another RuhrTriennale staging is headed for the armory, an ornate building where some rooms were designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. Oliver Messiaen's "Saint Francois D'Assise," conducted by Sylvain Cambreling, will be shown there from Dec. 12-22, 2009, as part of Gerard Mortier's first season as general manager of the New York City Opera.

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