BAYREUTH, Germany — It has become almost an expected part of the Bayreuth Festival tradition that the audience boos when the director of a radical new production takes a curtain call. But there is booing, and then there is the kind of demonstration that happened here on Wednesday night at the end of “Götterdämmerung.” The occasion was the fourth, and final, installment of the festival’s new production of Wagner’s “Ring,” the most anticipated event of the international celebrations for Wagner’s bicentennial.

When Frank Castorf, the avant-garde German director responsible for this confounding concept, took the stage with his production team, almost the entire audience, it seemed, erupted with loud, prolonged boos. It went on for nearly 10 minutes, by my watch, because Mr. Castorf, 62, who has been running the Volksbühne (People’s Theater) of Berlin since 1992, stood steadfast onstage, his arms folded stiffly. He sometimes jabbed a finger at the audience, essentially defying the crowd to keep it coming.

At one point, Kirill Petrenko, the conductor of the “Ring,” and the hero of the week, stepped out to try to escort Mr. Castorf and his colleagues to the sides. Mr. Petrenko wanted the curtain to go up so that the orchestra, which had assembled onstage for its own collective bow (a Bayreuth ritual), could be acknowledged. Mr. Castorf would not budge. So the curtain was raised, anyway, and the audience broke into deafening cheers directed at these impressive musicians, who over a six-day period under the insightful Mr. Petrenko played an exceptionally glowing, sumptuous and nuanced performance of Wagner’s “Ring” in the acoustically sublime house the composer designed.

The “Ring,” a towering achievement in the performing arts, is a touchstone for any opera house and director, but obviously holds a special place here. The mythological world Wagner created in these four epic operas has made the cycle especially fertile for high-minded, high-concept directors (including Robert Lepage at the Metropolitan Opera) — and for the close scrutiny of the legions of “Ring” fans who travel the earth for its performances.