Stein Way

After a false start with Wagner's Ring in the mid-seventies, West German theater director Peter Stein has successfully turned his talents to opera. His staging of Otello three years ago for the Welsh National Opera was a

beautifully detailed, bluster-free version of Verdi that sent the critics skittering into paroxysms of praise. And when he returned to Cardiff last fall to direct Verdi's Falstaff, the accompanying hoopla could have befit a Second Coming. This month, Stein makes his long-overdue American debut as his Falstaff kicks off the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Opera Project (in March, it will present Peter Sellars's staging of Kurt Weill's Das Kleine Mahagonny). With Princess Diana, patron of the W.N.O., scheduled to attend, this should be a first coming worth awaiting.

JIM RASENBERGER