This winter, the Metropolitan Opera is presenting its first-ever performances of Giuseppe Verdi's "Attila" (1846), concerning the notorious fifth century conquering Hun. On a shoestring budget, the New York City Opera offered a serviceable "Attila" during several seasons from the early 1980s, starring Samuel Ramey, through the mid-1990s. The Met's new "Attila," on the other hand, is little short of a fiasco. This "Attila" serves as the much-belated Met debut vehicle for Neapolitan conductor Riccardo Muti. To give Muti his due, this made for outstanding orchestral, choral and ensemble work, but it also meant enduring his fairly strict credo of "come scritto," or exactly as written by the composer, which is fully appropriate for such later works as "La Forza del Destino" and "Otello," but anathema in early Verdi bel canto, essentially stifling artistic creativity, when some vocal embellishment is expected. It's just stupid to offer two verses of cabalettas and not allow singers to differentiate between them by ornamenting the repeat. Fortunately, some cast members defy the ban, and kudos to them. Or maybe the martinet maestro is mellowing after all. The third of 10 performances, on March 3, is considered here.

Pierre Audi directed this "Attila" as merely a concert in costumes by Miuccia Prada, with sets by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. On the first night, February 23, just Herzog and de Meuron took bows, as well as the boos, undoubtedly intended for the full debuting production quartet, while Muti stalked off, eschewing a final bow with the singers. Prada's costumes aren't so bad, the military gear all shiny and metallic, and black look-of-leather, like something I and mine might don for Halloween or Mardi Gras.

We meet three of the four principals on an Aquileian battlefield consisting of a vast panorama of broken-up asphalt and exposed, no less twisted wires, the likes of which I haven't seen since the old West Village piers were in their decline. We encounter, as Attila, young bass Ildar Abdrazakov, who, with Muti's support, makes some impression, but, as yet, lacks the presence and imposing vocal stature to put across fully the all-important protagonist's part. Next comes Violeta Urmana as Odabella, hefty Amazon sister to Verdi's Lady Macbeth and Abigaille, in "Nabucco." Forget the Joan Sutherland "Santo di patria." There's no ornamentation here, as Urmana labors to field the written notes alone. It's too bad when an exciting mezzo-soprano becomes an effortful soprano. Finally, there is newcomer Giovanni Meoni, deputizing for the announced Carlos Alvarez, as Roman general Ezio, entrusted with the opera's most famous line, "Avrai tu l'universo,/Resti l'Italia a me"-You take the universe, let Italy remain mine-embraced by pre-unification Italians as patriotic, but actually the words of a traitor, as he plays 'let's make a deal' with Attila; more on Meoni later. The busted-up sidewalks set rises and the subsequent, actually patriotic scene, is played under it, with mystical hermits, the Aquileian people and, as Foresto, tenor Ramón Vargas, who employs some of the voix mixte tone he lent his Jussi Bjoeling-Nicolai Gedda-smooth Lenski, in "Eugene Onegin," and courageously ornaments the repeat of his cabaletta, "Cara patria"! I feared he might get into trouble for doing so, but, at this writing, he has done it in three out of three performances, so "bravo" to him for persisting.

The next major setting we see is a lush forest, and scenes take place below it-like Odabella's quiet "Oh! nel fuggente nuvolo," remembering her late father and Foresto, the love she also thinks dead, an aria Urmana negotiated more cleanly than her entrance scena, and her reunion and first altercation with Foresto-where are they, anyway-down a Hobbit hole? in Mime's cave?-or in cut-outs within the brush-like Attila's prophetic nightmare, later made flesh by Samuel Ramey, in a welcome cameo as Pope Leo AKA Bishop Leone, and Ezio's aria, in which Meoni, singing in a solid baritone, happily subtly adorned the bis of his cabaletta.

In the banquet scene, set between layers of the woods, FEMA-blue tarps back the banquet table, perhaps in response to "l'orrenda procella," the fearful storm-heck of a job, production team! The ensemble here would have been a highlight, were it not for Urmana's all-too-obviously effortful singing, and the cell phone that rang for a very long time during it. Maybe someone should have thought to engage Sondra Radvanovsky for Odabella and give next season's Toscas to Urmana instead. The final ensemble, the 'et tu, Odabella' one, when Attila's three enemies converge to do him in, also had potential that it fell just short of realizing. Tenor Russell Thomas, as Attila's trusty slave Uldino, also secretly his foe, completes the cast.

In later performances, Thomas moves up to the role of Foresto, and Eduardo Valdes assumes the part of Uldino. Franco Vassallo plays Ezio and Marco Armiliato takes over in the pit. Remaining hearings are on March 6 at 1 p.m. and 9, 12, 15, 19, 22 and 27 at 8 p.m. For tickets, priced from $15 to 375, telephone 212/362-6000, visit www.metopera.org, or go the Met box office at Lincoln Center. Rush tickets, for $20, are available at the box office on the day of performance, from Monday through Thursday.