Tristan Und Isolde

Katharina Wagner shocked the opera world with her radical direction of DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NURNBERG, when she took over her great-grandfather's theater at Bayreuth in 2007. It was a chaotic jumble of a production, with iconoclastic ideas tumbling over each other to be seen. But it also posed a forceful challenge to the established idolatry, and its final scene was a stimulating as anything I have seen in the opera house for years.This 2015 production of TRISTAN UND ISOLDE is more of a piece. It is iconoclastic, yes, but there are fewer sacred cows in this opera to be slaughtered. Its physical staging is once again more complex than it need be, but Wagner's direction of her singing actors shows an assurance that she simply did not have back then. And she has the advantage of strong collaborators. Both American tenor Stephen Gould and German soprano Evelyn Herlitzius look good, and they sing with an impressive dynamic range, excelling particularly in the quieter passages. Christa Mayer as Brangäne and Iain Paterson as Kurwenal (another German and a Scot) give strong support, and Christian Thielman's conducting is assured. Musically, this would not be my top TRISTAN -- that is still the old Flagstad recording with Furtwängler, though Sir Simon Rattle blew me away at the Met last fall -- but it is nonetheless a fine response to the score.Like the recent Met production, Katharina Wagner's designers, Frank Philip Schlößmann and Matthias Lippert, offer a modern steel ship architecture for the first act, with bridges, railings, and stairs, stairs, stairs. Indeed, it seems more like a nightmare space imagined by M. C. Escher, whose connecting links gradually get removed until it seems impossible for anyone on that vast structure to reach anyone else. Intellectually, it is interesting to emphasize isolation and the impossibility of connection. I can imagine it working well in the theater, where one can take in the set as a whole. But it is ill served by the video production, which starts in the prelude by exploring its many passageways and blind exits, and then keeps shifting perspective in the opera itself, including shots taken from above and behind, gratuitously showing angles that the audience would never see. All we get here is claustrophobia and confusion.If the set enhances isolation, it also denies privacy. All four of the major characters are onstage throughout the opening act, so that Isolde is actually present when Kurwenal insults her, and Tristan overhears all she says to Brangäne. There are no secrets, and thus no need of any love potion. Katharina Wagner makes no secret about the fact that Tristan and Isolde are attracted to one another from the very start, and the anger of their first scene together has an intense erotic edge. Her solution to the oath drinking scene, when both think they are holding a vial of poison, is utterly brilliant, and truer to the essential spirit of Richard Wagner's drama than anything I have ever seen. It was seeing this moment in a clip that made me go on to buy the whole thing; I am not sorry I did.Act II is a similar mixture. Wagner goes against many of her great-grandfather's instructions. Tristan and Isolde do not hide in a darkened garden but meet in a kind of bear pit lit by searchlights and watched by security personnel from an observation gallery above. They know this, and defy it. Their duet leads not to lovemaking, but to a suicide pact. And cuckolded King Mark (brilliantly played by Georg Zeppenfeld), is coldly furious rather than sorrowful. He carries a knife throughout his aria, which at the end he orders Melot (Raimund Nolte, perfect!) to plunge into the bound and blindfolded Tristan. All of which, though surprising, does have a certain logic.But once again the filming makes an already strange set very difficult to understand. The fact that Brangäne and especially Kurwenal are trapped in the bear pit along with the title characters makes for much distraction in the first part of the great love duet, abetted by a restless camera. The curious steel cage that appears for the second half of it seems pretty pointless, although it provided a greater variety of groupings than you usually see. While the attempted suicide was a good idea, it is hard to see how you can slice your wrist on the rounded end of a polished steel bar. As alas in her MEISTERSINGER, Katharina Wagner does not seem to see the inherent problem of being concrete and symbolic at the same time.So to Act III, for my money the tour-de-force that makes or breaks a production. And in this case? Breaks it, I'm afraid, despite the many good things it contains. What it lacks is transcendence -- and if a production of TRISTAN cannot deliver that in the end, what is the point of suffering all the angst that comes before it? I certainly can't blame the conductor; the music was as searing, as vibrant, as ravishing as you could wish. Few tenors can sustain the terrible demands of this act in live performance, after the two that have gone before. Stephen Gould was not perfect, but no worse than most. But I do blame Katharina Wagner for leaving him exposed for most of the act, without visual or dramatic support.Once again, she starts with something quite unexpected. In place of the usual sun-bleached clifftop, we have a group of five people sitting in darkness around a body, as though in a wake, lit only by a lamp in the ceiling. It is a rather beautiful effect, actually, like something by Caravaggio. But it takes up only one corner of the stage. During his delirium, Tristan moves out into the darkness, where various visions of Isolde appear, above, behind, and beside him, all in curious hard-edged blue triangles that come from nowhere and utterly lack poetry. Various surreal or even gruesome things happen to the Isoldes in these triangles, but this is no help at all to a Tristan who must sing and act one of the most difficult scenes in the repertoire while wandering in a blue limbo, with no interaction either with the characters who are supposed to be onstage with him, or with his imagined Isoldes.All right, that leaves the final scene -- but I am sorry to say it is just a mess, with the other surviving characters, Marke and Brangäne, confusing the picture, and Isolde clumsily moving Tristan's body into a sitting position. And while I could accept Wagner's new take on the King earlier, it simply does not make musical sense here, and the callousness of the ending will shock many listeners. I had hoped to give this production at least 4 stars, because it was musically solid and interested me all the way. But this last act removes a vital dimension and with it, I'm afraid, that fourth star.

Please release current Ring from Bayreuth for next issue in this series,

First of all the mise-en-scéne is absurd, meaningless. In Act I, for example, Isolde says: "Herr Tristan trete nah '." (Mr Tristan, come in) For what? He is on the scene with her all the time. The attempt of King Marke to force Isolde to perform oral sex at the end of the second act is a complete lack of common sense. Evelyn Herlitzius sings well when hatefully but gross to sing the lyrical passages. Stephen Gould is out of tune all the time, and in the third act screams like a madman.The end of the Liebestod with King Marke leading Isolde though grossly conflicts with the soft music that Wagner wrote. The only good thing is the musical direction of Christian Thielemann and the magnificent orchestra. Another eurotrash from Bayreuth. Poor Wagner

Zwölf Jahre dirigierte Christian Thielemann den Tristan nicht, 2015 brach sich seine neue Tristan-Auffassung wie eine Naturgewalt Bahn. Selbst erbittertste Gegner des Feuilletons mussten das anerkennen. Schon im Vorspiel zieht er das Tempo mächtig an, peitscht den 1.Aufzug, der ja oft lähmend mit seinen retardierenden Momenten um Tränke und Sühne ist, in 77 spannungsvollen Minuten durch. Das eilt weiter im 2. Akt, der nach der Raserei des „Tagesgesprächs“ zum ersten Mal im „oh sink hernieder“ zur Ruhe kommt, die 80 Minuten für den 2.Aufzug sind dann schon fast normal, auch der 3. zerfasert mit 75 Minuten nicht in endlosen Leiden. Dabei äußerste Präzision, kontrollierte Ekstase, da denke ich öfters an Petrenko als an den „alten“ Thielemann. Der Bayreuther Orchestergraben ermöglicht gewaltige Orchesterausbrüche, die im offenen Graben jeden Sänger an die Wand fahren würden, auf der DVD aber in guter Balance stehen – in der Raserei des Höhepunktes der Tristan Monologe („der Trank, der furchtbare Trank“) greift das Orchester fast körperlich nach Tristan und dem Hörer. Die „schönen Stellen“ kommen natürlich auch zu ihrem Recht, bleiben aber immer im großen Zug eingebettet.Ein ganz großes Tristan-Dirigat, vielleicht Thielemanns bisher bestes überhaupt. Nach mehrfachem Hören und Vergleichen besteht sein Dirigat neben Furtwängler, Böhm, Kleiber oder Barenboim, natürlich chacun à son goût, auch Kirill Petrenko wird kaum mehr an Präzision und Spannung herausarbeiten können.Die Beurteilung von Sängern bleibt immer Geschmacksfrage, aber Stephen Gould singt für mich einen herrlichen Tristan, männlich–baritonal, bombensicher die Höhen, Kraft ohne Ende, präsent vom ersten bis zum letzten Ton, dabei immer melodisch singend und nicht stemmend. Als Profikritiker darf man sich nicht begeistern, da fehlen dann die Zwischentöne und Klangfarben, vielleicht leidet er einfach zu kraftvoll und stimmschön. Aber bei wievielen Bayreuther Rundfunkübertragungen litt man mit überforderten Tenören mit und die Herren Suthaus, Windgassen, Kollo und Jerusalem haben ja auch ihre „Eigenheiten“. Ein starkes Rollenporträt liefert Georg Zeppenfeld, der Marke wird ja von der Regie nicht gütig gezeigt, er singt und stellt das grandios dar und wenn man den Text genau verfolgt, ist das garnicht soweit hergeholt, selten war Markes Klage so spannend gestaltet.Christa Meyer gibt eine warmstimmige Brangäne in der Tradition einer Christa Ludwig, für den Kurwenal wurde mit Iain Paterson eine Wotanstimme aufgeboten.Es bleibt ein Erdenrest mit Evelyn Herlitzius, die kurzfristig für Anja Kampe eingesprungen ist. Das kann man jetzt bedauern, so wie die Absage Andris Nelsons für den Parsifal 2016, wie es dann geklungen hätte, werden wir nicht erfahren – bei Nelsons bleibt aber noch die Chance. Für alle, die die Übertragung 2015 im Radio gehört haben, erstmal Entwarnung: Die DVD, die sicher aus mehreren Aufführungen zusammengeschneidert wurde, hat die oft schrillen und harten Töne der Premiere weit gehend eliminiert, Frau Herlitzius klingt überraschend „schön“, wobei sie natürlich nie eine Belcantistin war, steht sie doch in der Tradition der großen Heroinen und Singdarstellerinnen wie Gwyneth Jonas oder Hildegard Behrens. Ihre leidenschaftliche Darstellung ergibt dann ein überzeugendes Rollenporträt, manches wie die Erzählung im ersten Akt ist richtig furios gestaltet. In den Duetten dominiert eher Gould und ihre Stimme wird in den Orchestersound eingebettet. Und so rettet sie uns vor der Perfektion, die uns ja laut Wagner verrückt machen müsste.Inszenierungen sind in letzter Zeit ja oft nur Reflexe auf übermächtige Bühnenbilder und Raumgestaltungen. So dominiert ein eindrucksvolles, verschlungenes Treppengewirr den 1.Akt, gibt auch Spielraum für Bühnenaction. Ein Gefängnisinnenhof mit allerhand „Foltergewerken“? und Verfolgerscheinwerfern auf der hinteren Mauer mit dem bösen Marke und intriganten Melot schafft bedrückende Atmosphäre. Tristan und Isolde suchen da erst Schutz vor den Scheinwerfern unter einem Zelt, an dem er Sternenlichtlein anbringt, derweil Kurwenal vergeblich auszubrechen versucht und sich dann traumatisiert auf dem Boden wälzt. Das Liebesduett singen sie dann klangschön nach hinten, derweil immer jünger werdende Doppelgänger einen Tunnel beschreiten und sich ins Nichts auflösen. Alpträume im 3.Akt, keine Verklärung, kein Liebestod, mehr will ich da nicht verraten. Katharina Wagner bebildert ihren Tristan spannungsvoll, mit manchen Überraschungen und Umdeutungen, nah an der Musik, nicht verstörend, aber auch nichts weiteres zum tieferen Verständnis beitragend – aber wer hat das wirklich geschafft?Für jeden Wagnerfreund trotz kleiner Abstriche ein wichtiges Dokument. Und der Wunsch, in ein paar Jahren das letzte Thielemann-Dirigat der Produktion zu veröffentlichen, mit einer neuen Isolde und nur auf CD.

I bought this under an illusion that this was Richard Wagner's opera. In fact it is by Katharina Wagner. She has borrowed the music and words from Richard's opera, but used them to tell a different and simpler story of erotic love and nasty people who get in the way of the lovers. The result is that the music tells one story and the action another. The words fight to make some connection between the two, sometimes succeeding but mostly failing. King Mark's role in particular simply becomes nonsense. In the end Richard's magnificent subtle opera, going to the heart of the human condition, becomes an incoherent mishmash of clichés and clever (sometimes too clever) ideas.In its defence, the singing is of a high standard, particularly King Mark and Tristan, and the performers can't be faulted for trying to make some sense of the production, even if at times they seem to have been directed to do strange things. For example, in Act One Tristan and Isolde end up singing looking over the ship's rail at the audience rather than each other. No doubt there are explanations for these oddities, but they went over my head.My recommendation is that you listen to this, but without the video. Unfortunately the voices are often drowned out by the orchestra in the recording, but apart from this the performance is musically of a high standard.If you are unfamiliar with Tristan and Isolde, this is not the production to see first, maybe try one of the superb versions with Waltraud Meier.

Magnificient.