Not being a special fan of Willy Decker, it was interesting to read about his staging of Wagner Tristan und Isolde at the Ruhr Trienniale. Here's a report by James Sohre, also not usually a fan of abstraction. "If reassurance is needed (and I fear it is, oh how it is) that a gifted creative team can not only brilliantly innovate, but also genuinely serve the composer’s intent, this production was proof positive. I am not sure the last time I was so captivated by a creation of modern art, as I was taken by the massive and utterly simple set design by Wolfgang Gussmann."
It helps a lot that the conduuctor is Kirill Petrenko. No megastar singers at Riuhr (it's not that kind of place) but if a production can convert this way, it can't be bad. Please read the full review in Opera Today. "Luminous", says Sohre.
The whole Royal Festival Hall standing in ovation for Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Even the ushers were impressed. Violeta Urmana stunned the capacity audience with a glorious, passionate Isolde. But that wasn't all. Orchestrally, too, this was an outstanding experience. The Philharmonia Orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen was exceptionally lucid.
Usually Wagner Tristan und Isolde is played by opera house orchestras, so the music is naturally eclipsed by what's happening on stage. Fine as opera house orchestras are, they play second fiddle. The Philharmonia though does a much wider repertoire, and is constantly challenged to excel. Under Esa-Pekka Salonen they're exploring new territory : this Tristan und Isolde was exciting as pure music.
That first chord alone, stretched and ending with a sudden zip, expressed insight. Tristan and Isolde each have a past, but their lives culminate in a brief blaze of passion quickly snuffed out. Wagner's music references the ocean, constantly surging, swelling and pulling back. Ocean as metaphor for emotional depth. Salonen led the Philharmonia through the constant flux magnificently. Clearly defined leitmotivs, precise details, never losing sight of the ultimate destination. Exquisite phrasing, absolute lucidity.
The overture to the final act was a kind of apotheosis, orchestrally, exquisitely judged and balanced, emotionally as vivid as the text to follow. There are many ambiguities in Tristan und Isolde, but when an orchestra plays it "as music", the inner logic becomes so powerful that you're hypnotized. The Philharmonia was incandescent. Truly this was a performance that will be remembered as one of the highlights in the Philharmonia's illustrious history.
Few can create the part the way Violeta Urmana does. Hers is a voice with genuine richness and lustrous resonance. Her technique is superb - perfect phrasing and breath control, nothing forced or played for effect, none of the silly tricks of vibrato and volume some popular singers resort to for effect. Isolde is much more sophisticated than Brünnhilde though they're both heroines the world cannot contain. Urmana's Isolde is magnificent, a princess with a huge history behind her, connected,to ancient arts of magic and healing. Which is why Tristan, whose wounds are psychic as well as physical, needs her. Whoever dressed Urmana knew what they were doing. A creamy bodice on a dark dress with sleeves emphasized Urmana's womanly amplitude. She looked like an elegant version of the primeval goddess Astarte. Sexier than Stemme, and an accurate insight.
Gary Lehman is a Heldentenor who is a Held - a hero with dignity and honour. Tristan's not at all a conventional Action Man, as Wagner's text keeps telling us. He's carried his fate since birth. Calling a child "Tristan" is a form of child abuse, dooming a kid to a life of sorrow. No wonder he's death obsessed, a suicide waiting to happen. Lehman sings with conviction (even when he's lying down). He's moving. In the Third Act, when Tristan speaks of his past, revealing his vulnerability, Lehman's voice softens tenderly: extremely moving. The film projection towers over him, showing a small boy staring at a candle which might suddenly die. Incredible unity of voice, visuals and emotion, totally true to Wagner's text and music. Lehman and Urmana have recorded Parsifal with Gergiev. For them, I'm getting that.
Anne Sofie von Otter was an excellent Brangäne. The character is strong, and von Otter creates the part with forceful but elegant purity of tone. Von Otter and Urmana are wonderful together. Each very distinctive and assertive, opposite sides of a similar persona. A dream team - hopefully they'll work together more often.
Jukka Rasilainen as Kurnewal is luxury casting, too. He's very experienced indeed, and it shows. Kurnewal, like Brangäne, is by no means a small part, but an important counterfoil to Tristan. Although there's less to sing, more depends on the quality of the performance. Rasiliainen expresses himself well: this Kurnewal makes an impact as a fully realized personality.
Matthew Best (King Marke), Stephen Gadd (Melot), Joshua Ellicott (Helmsman) were good but outclassed by Urmana, Lehma, von Otter and Rasiainen. With principals as good as these, it's hard for anyone to compete.
Someone told me that a man near her raged out at the first interval because he didn't approve of the film projections. Which says more about him than the projections. Surely anyone seriously interested in opera would have noticed the quality of the singing and playing? This short-sighted bigotry proves how little he really knows or cares. Opera is meant to be visual and like any other element in a performance there will be good and bad. There have been infinitely more stupid projections than these, as anyone who saw Wozzeck at the South Bank last year will remember.
Bill Viola's projections would operate well as a separate stand alone work of art, a Tristan und Isolde installation, for example. But in performance, they should relate to what's happening. The worst part was in the First Act, where two models who don't resemble the singers take their clothes off in slow, ritualistic motion. I can see the point, though it's very deep, too complex to take in while so much else is going on. But it's horribly distracting because it doesn't connect to the performance itself. The music (especially this time) surges, the film operates in a different time frame. If this sequence was completely cut out, a lot of the problems would be removed.
When Viola's film uses semi-abstract images that complement the performance, the projections work very well indeed. They are intelligent - images of night and day, light and dark, water and fire occur throughout the opera,, and the film follows text faithfully. For example, Brangäne's torch, haunting the love duet, adding to the tension. When Tristan asks Isolde to follow him, there's a shot of a wild path, trees beaten out of shape by harsh winds. A reference to coastal conditions but also to hardship.
The projections in the Third Act are by far the best, for they express deeper ideas in the opera. The ocean, distant lights hidden by mist, the rocky shore, which seems barren until you see the spring that brings forth clear, pure refreshment, feeding mosses and lichen. Because we are seeing Tristan's homeland we're drawn closer into his soul. This is when Tristan reveals himself emotionally, and we get a glimpse of how he came to be who he is. When the image of the ocean is lit by colours of fire and dawn, it expresses the union of opposites which runs throughout the opera.
When Urmana sings the Liebestod the image behind her comes alive, white lights rising upwards as the music does, until the image, like Isolde herself is transfigured ino another plane of existence. It's beautiful and enhances the music appropriately. How it could be done in actual performance, I don't know.
The fact is that semi-staging is a newish art form, still evolving. If the economy continues into nosedive, we may well be hearing more concert performances with minimal staging. That's not a bad thing at all, if it means resources are put into great singing and orchestras of the calibre of the Philharmonia. Less is often more, because it focuses on the essential drama not the trappings.
Peter Sellars shows what can be done. He uses the Royal Festival Hall as his canvas.As Isolde's ship docks in the harbour (which we don't actually need to see), Matthew Best appears, spotlit, in the Royal Box. As a king would. The gulf between Isolde and King Marke made real in the way no stage setting could express. Von Otter's Brangäne occupies the ramparts upper level, side stage, trumpets are heard from far away. Sellars incorporates movement into this concert performance as effectively as any full staging.
For Rattle Mahler First with the Berliner Phil see http://classical-iconoclast.blogspot.com/2010/09/rattle-berliner-mahler-1-beethoven-prom.html
When Simon Rattle first started conducting the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, some wondered if a conductor known for modern(ish) music could adapt to early music. Not a problem. Many modern composers and conductors have refreshed themselves in music before 1870. No-one now queries Rattle's affinty with the genre.
Prom 21 confirms how Rattle and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment use period principles to inform mid 19th century classics. Refinement isn't something always associated with Berlioz, but shorn of the big choral finale, the delicacy of the Act 2 love duet from Roméo et Juliette sounds exquisite. Romeo and Juliette are alone, in a garden at night. Rattle makes the themes curve like caresses. Remarkably fluid playing, strings and winds in seamless harmony.
Knowing that Tristan und Isolde was to come, it was natural to pick out correspondances, like the tiny passage near the beginning which sounds like a prelude to the later opera. Can we hear the future ocean call?
Another Act 2 love duet, this time between Tristan and Isolde. Period instruments favour intimacy, so the orchestra creates a musical veil wrapping the lovers from the world outside. We hear the sea and the muffled sounds of the hunt, but Tristan and Isolde are oblivious. We hear the mounting tension in the music and Brangäne's cries, but we're hypnotized by the music, just as the lovers are hypnotized by one another.
Fabulous, luminous playing, gently unfolding, so when the tension breaks, it's agony. A pity that the singing wasn't technically up to the level of the orchestra. Violetta Urmana's a dramatic diva, more heroic than tender, and Ben Heppner's voice is losing its bloom. I don't mind that much, since Tristan is a man with a past, and a haunted past at that. Indeed, psychologically he's more convincing as a weary older man than a mindless lad. Isolde has a past, too, and had planned to kill him. So no staging needed. Urmana and Heppner act with their voices, and to me, that's what drama is about.
Being at the Royal Opera House Tristan und Isolde a second time is good because the real beauty of this production is how subtle it really is. Forget the still photos of the sets, they're misleading. Again, this is a reference to tradition - the tradition of those like Alfred Roller who realized that electricity transformed stagecraft, opening new frontiers never possible before. Imagine if Wagner had lived to see electric light? Given Wagner's obsession in this opera with night and day, light and dark, he'd have leapt at the possibilities new technology offered. All that Cosima-era rigidity blinds us to the fact that Wagner was a radical, who challenged all assumptions about opera in his time. That's why he revolutionized music theatre.
He was also interested in cutting-edge stagecraft, which was why Bayreuth was built, not as a mausoleum but as a place where he could do whatever he liked to achieve his dreams, without being restrained by the usual opera house systems. Remember how much trouble he took to get a state of the art dragon for the Ring? That doesn't mean he wanted the same dragon cranked out forever. If he'd had electricity, film or computers, he'd be out there using them.
So this new production is in fact a lot closer to the spirit of Wagner's stagecraft than many realize. The flat surfaces on this set come alive with light, taking on shades and hues no painted set could ever do. This production is an elaborate symphony of light, as if the music were being made visible. Silver, pearl, dove grey, oyster, silk, pewter, charcoal, myriad nuances of colour constantly changing and moving.
The diagonal wall is highly textured, with reflective particles embedded, which sparkle softly. The huge curtain behind the main stage is a dark shade of burgundy which changes hue. Because light effects can be so sensitively controlled, this offers variety that isn't possible by other means.
Moreover there are many different light sources and angles, some cutting across each other in amazing ways. So singers cast several shadows at once, in different directions. These silhouettes "speak". In Act One Isolde's shadow looms huge, almost to the ceiling. As Brangäne moves away from Isolde, her own shadow shrinks because the angle changes. In Act Three, Tristan's show eclipses Kurnewal, as they do life, and then their shadows. Shadows create a new, unearthly perspective.
Now I understand why the diagonal wall is so important. All these patterns of light and angles are carefully calculated, in relation to the music and to the movements of the singers on stage. Perhaps sight lines in the uppermost galleries furthest to the left may be lost, but the gain is this beautiful and utterly unique symphony of light.
By the way, yes, there is a ship. But note how Wagner himself introduces it. Isolde's first words are "Wo sind wir?" . Of course ! When you are inside a ship you don't see what's outsiide it. It looks like any other room, the sea doresn't have to be visible. it's in the music. Throughout the opera, Wagner stresses how things appear differently from different perspectives. Loy is onbe of the most musically literate of directors and understands the score from this deeperlevel. So no need to depict Isolde and Brangäne fills pinned to the sails. When they do go up, the lights frame a mast and rigging. As always, read the score. Proper debate about this production has been hijacked by those who think that they and only they know what the opera is, even more so than Wagner did,
Then the acting! Incredibly detailed and subtle. Heppner's Tristan is a suicide waiting to happen. That's why he confronts Isolde asking her to kill him, and why he falls on Melot's knife. Death by cop! Heppner is far too good to pension off because he doesn't look like a flash young blade. But Christof Loy's direction turns him into a hero of a different kind. Heppner on board the ship is so wracked by his demons that his whole body language is tense - he even bites his nails. Tristan comes from what probably is an all-male environment so he's even less likely than most men to understand his inner feelings. All his life he's buried his unhappiness by displacement activity and now for whatever reason he can't keep up the image.
So he can't face Isolde except by brutish means. Kurnewal comes from this emotionally crippled environment too, but he accepts it at face value. In the last act, when Tristan pours out his emotions, he tries to connect to Kurnewal by flicking his hair. It's a classic male way of seeking intimacy without daring to commit. Kurnewal buys into the macho mindset so much that he realizes that Isolde is somehow dangerous though he hasn't the depth to figure out why. So he postures like a big man and takes it out on little Brangäne. Watch Kurnewal's last moments. Suddenly one-dimensional man realizes just how complicated life is, and for the first time in his life, there's nothing he can do about it. So he addresses Tristan, but can't cross the space between them.
Lots and lots more....this is a production that needs to be seen again. It asks a lot of the listener, but it repays the effort.
The irony is that knocking directors as bogeymen has become a sport. There have been hundreds of modern productions, for at least 50 years. Some good, some bad, most a mix. Some have been infinitely worse than this Tristan und Isolde - think of Tim Albery's Flying Dutchman that turned the Dutchman into a clone of Daland. Nobody objected to that. The irony is that Christof Loy is a director who pays scrupulous attention to the music and builds his work around the score, like his work or not. But this production had the misfortune to come along right after all that publicity about the booing of Tosca at the Met. The sad fact is "intellectual" these days is an epithet. See HERE for main piece and HEREfor First impressions.
Please read this review in Opera Today, with full cast details and production photos.l
Over 100 years ago, Adolphe Appia sketched designs for Tristan und Isolde which have influenced theatre design from Alfred Roller to Wieland Wagner. Appia's vision came to life on stage at the Royal Opera House this week. This new production has far deeper roots in tradition than its detractors realize.
After the revival of the Ring in 1877, Wagner himself said "Next year we'll do things differently". To him, what mattered was the drama not the packaging. Even arch-conservative Houston Stewart Chamberlain saw merit in Appia's ideas but Cosima could not be swayed from her narrow concept of what Wagner had to be.
The sets for this new production directly reference Appia, even to the detail of tall arched windows in the background. Throughout the opera, Wagner contrasts night and day. Yet central to this opera is the idea of illusion and delusion . The colour scheme starts with clean black and white contrasts but nothing in this opera is quite as black and white as it seems. Thus the gradual predominance of myriad shades of grey which adapt to changes in light and shadow. The greys are elegant, like silver, silk, suede, marble. The luxury of King Marke's court is evoked by elegant, minimalist allusion.
The stage was separated into foreground and background, so the drama is concentrated on the foreground without distraction.from the essential drama. Tristan und Isolde isn't about furnishings, it's about ideas of life, love and death, and how people respond to them. Indeed, it's clear from the libretto that Tristan and Isolde reject material things. Tristan doesn't want to inherit the kingdom of Cornwall. Isolde knows from experience what power struggles can mean. She may be a prize of war, but she's not a shallow trophy wife: Marke doesn't dare touch her. Thus in this production Nina Stemme walks decisively away from the banquet in the background, removes her stilettos and sits with Brangäne (Sophie Koch) on simple folding chairs. What she sits on hardly matters when she's overwhelmed by a love so intense it can overcome death.
Tristan und Isolde is an epic tragedy, so this production connects to ancient traditions. In Greek tragedy, there's no set at all : actors move to the side when they're not doing anything. The concept of fussy staging is relatively recent. Because most people have been brought up on TV and movies, it's easy to become attuned to the idea that visual images have to be literal so you don't have to think too much about what's really going on. In art theatre the opposite holds. It's the drama that counts, however it's realized.
Although Nina Stemme has sung Isolde many times, this may well be one of the defining performances of her career. She moves as if Isolde lives within her: this is method acting at its best. When she sings, her voice rises with utter conviction, so attuned is she to what this Isolde represents. Throughout, her singing and acting were so attuned that it shows how involved she was in this production. Like actors, singers need to know how their part fits in with the whole. From the evidence of Stemme's performance, she's definitely on message.
Ben Heppner, too, was convincing. Tristan's heroism was like emotional chain mail, a displacement activity for suppressing his inner demons. So Heppner's Tristan was a vulnerable, sensitive personality,all the more sympathetic for that than if he were a cocky but shallow young blade. Thus the tenderness between Tristan and Isolde in this production is genuinely moving, and a very important part of the concept. In a world full of treachery and danger, their love is the one thing they can count on. When Stemme and Heppner embrace, there's real tenderness, all the more intimate because they're surrounded by vast open space.
So strong are the dramatic dynamics in Loy's production that Tristan and Isolde aren''t the only ones experiencing new emotions. I had wondered why a singer of Michael Volle's stature would be singing Kurnewal, but he turns it into a very major part. Just as the theme of night and day infuses the opera, Tristan and Kurnewal are like night and day. Volle's Kurnewal is such a forceful character he might match Isolde for mettle. This adds a deeper element to their relationships. Volle's Kurnewal is so strong that like Isolde he's fiercely protective although he doesn't really relate to Tristan's complexities. When at last it dawns on him what Tristan is about, Volle's Kurnewal undergoes a kind of transfiguration, lower key than the principals', but a change nonetheless. Volle sang with such authority that he almost gave John Tomlinson's King Marke competition. Tomlinson's voice is showing signs of strain, but as Marke that gives his portrayal an edge of world weariness, which is perfectly apt.
Sophie Koch's Brangäne isn't the elderly nag some productions would have but a lively young woman. We don't know what Brängane will go on to do, but Koch's energy might indicate that, like Kurnewal, she will go on with life with greater understanding. Richard Berkeley-Steele sang Melot with deceptive smoothness. He wields his knife with lethal swiftness.
Good operas operate on many different levels, revealing their depths only with time and experience. So too, this production, which hints at a lot more than meets the eye .Eventually, the men in the banquet are shown falling asleep, as if drunk, just as Tristan and Isolde were intoxicated. Slowly, as if in freeze frame, the men rise up and stab each other, as Melot had stabbed Tristan. This happens in the background, and doesn't impinge on the main action, so is glimpsed rather than made explicit. Perhaps this extends the drama into the outer world, where power games and treachery abound, and it makes the men of Marke's court more human than the ciphers they sometimes are. Again, the references to timeless Greek tragedy : the men act like a silent chorus, commenting on the main action, while remaining in the background.
This was uncommonly musically literate production. With all trappings removed the emphasis is on the music, from which all the stage action evolves. Gestures, footsteps, angles take their cue from the music, blocked almost as if choreographed. Stemme walks diagonally from the back to the foreground, her progress sustaining the tension in the music.. All focus is on how the music moves, so the pace unfolds as the music does. Here the music was the "star" just as present as the singers. Apart from a few moments in the First act, easily corrected later, the orchestral playing was of a high standard as is usual at the Royal Opera House. Not every conductor is a Furtwängler, nor should we expect anyone to be, but Antonio Pappano is good and reliable, and gets the best from his musicians.
And the Liebestod ? Stemme seemed to glow from within, even when she was singing prone on the floor, in Heppner's arms. They remain entwined as long as possible. Throughout the opera, different levels of reality have been in play. Stemme goes and sits in the chair where Tristan had sat earlier when he'd finally confronted his demons and whee Kurnewal came to undersand that life is more complex than he's realized. Throughout the opera, Wagner has stressed that all things are mutable. The chair is temporary, and it's fragile, but what it symbolizes is powerful. Material things mean notghing at all in the face of love so intense that it can overcome death.
When Stemme sits there now, the implication is that the boundaries of life and death no longer exist. Tristan and Isolde are united for eternity on some transfigured plane. Isolde may not have healed the wound made by Melot's knife, but Tristan's real wounds went much deeper. His wound was in his soul, and that wound she did heal, through love.
Please see the other posts about this production and about Tristan und Isolde performance historyHEREHEREHERE and HERELots more on Wagner, this opera and other productions on this blog. Lots on the art of stagecraft too.
One of the slogans often put about is that there is some kind of "traditional" staging that must be enforced. Yet Wagner himself famously said "next year we'll do everything differently". The drama was what mattered to him, not the packaging.
Look again at the Aldophe Appia sketch for Tristan und Isolde I posted earlier. Wow! It materialized onstage at the Royal Opera House last night, with the extra benefit of modern technology and lighting. The ROH stage is angled anyway, so no need for a "platform". One wing extends into the stage diagonally ( which may have to change angle for future productions so upper left galleries get a better view). And there's even the tall arched windows Appia sketched!
Then the colour scheme - planes of black and white, but lots of shades of grey, like silver, silk, suede, marble, extremely elegant and beautiful. Obviously evoking Appia but more importantly a reference to the recurring themes in the opera of light, dark and in-between.... nothing in this opera is really black and white, as the text keeps reminding us, again and again.
The significance was probably lost on many, as the booing started almost as soon as the prelude began. This was an unusually inattentive crowd determined to prove a point whatever the production actually might be. Up in the galleries someone noticed that the booers were having a wonderful time, enjoying themselves. There is nothing wrong in principle about disliking something intensely. Everyone has different tastes. But for every person who boos because they've actually thought about the production, there must be a hundred who boo because for one moment in their lives they have power. It's fulfilling : they've all read about the Met Tosca booing and now they are venting themselves on ROH. Just because "everyone" says something doesn't make it right. Once people cared enough that they'd go listen. Now going out is a sort of communal bloodsport. No one has the same taste, but booing is not fair, it's bullying.
As Wagner tells us over and over in this opera, what you see just might not be what you get. Illusion, delusion, things that need to be properly understood not taken at face value.
This was uncommonly musically literate: all irrelevance stripped away, revealing the music. Every gesture, every movement directed towards showing what's on in the music. Often those who hate "modern" opera claim they come for the music. This time the music "was" the star. Loy doesn't spell things out literally, forcing you to really listen and think about what the sounds and words mean.
Also very good was the way the stage was separated into foreground and background, concentrating the main action on the spartan "inner space" which really matters. The background fills in background. The grandeur of a royal banquet is shown, very formal and entirely male, power oriented. Which is Isolde's predicament, she's a spoil of war, and not the kind of person who gets off on surface glamour. One of the main points of the opera is that Isolde doesn't play games, and Tristan has turned his back on them.
At the end, the men in the banquet hall stab each other in stylized slow motion. At first I thought, why? Then it dawned on me that it's a comment on the themes of treachery, death, betrayal all over again acted out in society. Since this occurs in the background, not the foreground it does not overpower the main action at all. Far from being "wilful" Loy puts his comment behind the main scene, reinforcing the themes rather than placing his extension for their own sake.
And the Liebestod ? Magnificent singing - Nina Stemme is passionately committed, she burns with intensity. Tristan and Isolde embrace tenderly - it's very touching and intimate, particularly against the vast empty spaces (part of the meaning too). Read the libretto: the borders between life and death are not as simple as they seem. Throughout the opera, people are seeing things in different ways, mistaking surface for reality. Eventually Ben Heppner's arms drop away in one last spasm. It could be rigor mortis but it connects to the ideas of death and illusion, and of different realities. And then the soaring, glorious transfiguration that is the Liebestod which ends with Isolde sitting where Tristan had been earlier. So the lovers are united in deeper ways than we can imagine.
I've been offline til this pm so I'lll write more - watch this space! There is so much in this opera that it's hard to reach all levels in any production. Anything good is like that, not easy to "get" at first and benefits from thoughtful consideration. This production with its silences and subtleties isn't easy, but it's worthy of an opera like this where what's really happening isn't literal at all.
MORE TO COME !!!!!! Please see review above and also second night. There's so much in this production that grows the more you you listen and think about it. Please keep looking in, there will be more. I'm going again Friday. Please also read the other posts on Tristan und Isolde at Glyndebourne and Bayreuth on this blog and on the ROH Lulu
This is how Adolphe Appia saw Tristan und Isolde around 1900. This is Isolde in Act 1 on her way to Cornwall as trophy wife. The irony that such a feisty, strong woman should be a trophy wife is horrible! It's part of the tragedy, too, though most productions (a male preserve) don't make much of it. What Appia is fixed on is the sense of entrapment, the world closing in, the feeling of doom. We see Isolde in a vast space, which looms over her menacingly, the only light that which is around her, and she's calling out into the abyss. Once I saw a production where she was sitting in a creaky hold, splashed by water so we know she's in a boat. But what Appia is showing is Isolde's inner predicament. It also connects to the recurring themes of night and day, darkness and light which run through the whole opera, meaning different things. This week a brand new production of Tristan und Isolde starts at the Royal Opera House, London. It's directed by Christof Loy, whose recent Lulu was so amazingly true to the music. Read about it on this blog under Berg Lulu tags and read about Loy under Loy and T&I under T&I. "I don't like distractions," Loy said recently. So don 't expect breastplates and helmets. It's the human drama he's interested in.
For reviews of the production see HERE. "Opera has so much to give", says Christof Loy, whose new production of Tristan und Isolde opens at the Royal Opera House on 29th September. Loy's credentials lie in baroque and Mozart (read what the FT said of his recent Salzburg Handel Theodora HERE) He likes to get to the heart of the music and drama : "I don't like superficial distractions".
So don't expect chainmail and fussy costumes to tell this story. Loy's approach is to focus on the characters and how they develop. Not for nothing Wagner places so much emphasis on what happens before the opera even begins. Who are Tristan and Isolde, as human beings?
“These are fragile people”, he adds. “And fragile people often hide behind an emotional wall to hide their deepest feelings”. Tristan in particular is a much more complex person than his surface heroism might indicate. “He is an extremely damaged person, carrying so much guilt. His father died after begetting him, his mother died giving him birth, and he breaks his uncle’s heart. ‘Zu welchem Los erkoren, ich damals wohl geboren?’”
“So Tristan feels unworthy, but like so many macho men, he builds up an action hero image which has nothing to do with what he feels inside. He cannot express himself, he hides behind an emotional coat of armour”. To the world he may be “der Helden ohne Gleiche” but Isolde, ever sharp, sees him cowering, “in Scham und Scheue”.
Tristan und Isolde is so familiar that everyone carries baggage from past experience and assumptions. There's a saying that the path to wisdom lies in realizing just how much you don't know. So read the score with fresh ears, as if it were completely new. It's fascinating to see how explicit Wagner is on some things, yet elusive on other quite critical points. Read what Loy says in this interview HERE. Read what Loy says about Nina Stemme who sings Isolde. Ben Heppner is Tristan, Sophie Koch Brangane, John Tomlinson Marke and Michael Volle Kurnewal. Please also read my other posts on Tristan und Isolde - Glyndebourne and Bayreuth.
photo credit : Christof Loy, Royal Opera House 9/2009
In the early 90's Decca did a series of recordings of Entartete Musik, music suppressed by the Nazi regime. It was an act of great commercial foresight because at the time much of this music wasn't known outside specialist circles. The Decca series, created by Dr Albrecht Dümling, was truly visionary, extremely well curated, and the performances often so good they remain classics even now the genre is pretty much mainstream. This series is the benchmark by which all else is measured. Probably there won't be another series of this breadth and quality.
Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten was part of the series, conducted by Lothar Zagrosek and the Berlin Radio Symphony who were behind many of the recordings. Entartete Musik was cherished in East Germany, where there was a performance tradition. On one disc there's Matthias Goerne, barely out of his teens. Worthy as that recording is, it's outclassed by the performance in Salzburg in 2005, when Peter Ruzicka was director. So a visionary performance, unmissable for anyone, interested in the genre or not. This puts Die Gezeichneten firmly in the mainstram repertoire.
The Salzburg production is so good that topping it will be a challenge no one has yet dared attempt. It was conducted by Kent Nagano, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin (where many East Berliners went to). The cast is absolutely top notch : Anne Schwanewilms, Michael Volle, Wolfgang Schöne and Robert Brubaker in what must be the ultimate performance of his career. The director was Nikolaus Lehnhoff.
Lehnhoff's penchant for massive constructions works wonderfully to express the meaning of the opera. The stage at first looks like it's strewn with formidable boulders. Alviano Salvago has built Elysium, a secret world on a remote island off Genoa. These boulders are like the bastions of a frightening fortress, which is what Elysium really is, despite being dedicated to art, love and beauty. There are prisoners here, and unspeakable crimes which don't get revealed until the end. Salvago himself is a fortress. He's a hunchback, "the ugliest man in Genoa", crippled by self-loathing. He's built Elysium as an escape. It's so perfect that it makes everything beautiful. It's used by aristocrats for exquisite orgies, in which Salvago himself doesn't participate despite the magical aura which makes hideousness beautiful.
As the lovely Overture unfolds, Brubaker is carefully putting on elaborate makeup. He's dressed in a flimsy negligee. but his cropped hair and butch features make him look like a caricature drag queen. Immediately, the staging and acting conncet to the idea of psychic dissonance that is so much the soul of this opera. The boulders on stage are formed by a giant statue of a woman, but a statue collapsed and destroyed, only one arm, on hand still raised in a futile gesture to heaven. Most of the action in the opera unfolds on the statue's body, so watch carefully how the body becomes part of the action. Sometimes its rounded curves nurture, sometimes they allow a place to hide, but they remain opaque, inpenetrable, unlike the island's victims. The stage too extends to the walls around the auditorium, arches representing the many secret rooms in the grotto, yet also look sinister, like catacombs. The statue does not foretell the ending. It's clear in the music and text all along that Elysium is an unsustainable delusion in the first place, and Salvago is not deluded. This is important because there are moral and social values in this opera. Elysium is a prototype of an ideal society, corrupted by people who don't have ideals.
Salvago announces he's giving Elysium away to the City of Genoa. An altruistic act, perhaps, but Salvago knows that the girls used in the orgies were kidnapped from the town. Schreker's dwarf is an altogether more complex person than any of Zemlinsky's. Zemlinsky's dwarves fall in love with beauties, but accept their rejection on a relatively straightforward fairy tale level. Schreker's Salavgo (note the name) is so screwed up he doesn't dare look beyond himself and or even conceive of love. Fortress Elysium blocks out vulnerable feelings.
Schreker's drama is more than fairy tale in other ways. Listen to the way Anne Schwanewilms creates Carlotta Nardi, the wayward daughter of the Podestà (Wolfgang Schöne). She's a liberated woman, an artist who doesn't follow rules, the personification of Der ferne Klang, the elusive melody in physical form. She paints souls. Listen to that wonderful passage where she sings about her dream. She sees a "small wretched wanderer" walk into the sunlight, and a miracle happens - he grows larger and larger. "So male ich eure Gestalt, Signor Alviano". Watch Brubaker's face twitch. This is truly masterful acting. He's pouring out a flood of dammed up emotions, too powerful for Salvago to contain. Then she says, she still needs to see "trunkene Auge, darin all die Schoenheit sich gespeigelt".
This line is critical. Can Salvago give her the "drunken eye" that mirrors beauty ? Brubaker pulls his butch black overcoat on again, hiding his soft pink negligee, and for a moment stands alone on the harsh boulders. The scene ends with poignant strings, the film projecting the statue's blind stone eyes.
Salvago's mirror image twin is Graf Vitelozzo Tamare, given a tour de force performance by Michael Volle, another high point in his career he deserves to be very proud of. Tamare is handsome, tall, virile. What body language! Yet listen to the music behind his description of Elysium, and its "Ein künstliche Grotto auf jenem Eiland", the Eiland soaring, swelling lyrically. So it makes sense that Tamare, Alpha male that he is, unlke the other men, the one who discovers love. "There are men who see only the light, and darkness "ist ihrem Fremd". Since he's set eyes on the Carlotta with her mysterious, challenging smile, no longer can he be careless and uncaring, no longer can he be the prankster hero he used to be. Think Tristan. Pity Volle isn't a tenor. Listen to the way Schreker builds echoes of horn calls into the music, as if he did hear the parallels. But it's distinctively Schreker's voice, "Ferne Musik und leise Gesänge" further invoked in the orchestral interlude that follows, where Lehnhoff has Schwanewilms start to seduce Brubaker.
Both Schwanewilms and Brubaker are encased in transparent black chiffon on naked flesh. When Schwanewilms talks off Brubaker's hard, heavy boots it's erotic and yet extremely tender. Watch Brubaker's expressions carefully as he doesn't have much to sing but his reactions are extremely important - thank goodness for close-ups in film! Yet seduction is just a simile for deeper intimacy. Carlotta sings of going out on s a sunny day, feeling sad without knowing why. Salvago realises someone has at last broken down his emotional walls. But that means he has to learn to give tenderness in return, for she, too is "ein gar gebrechliches Spielzug" She pulls off his pink dress, exposing him, but that's it.
The most striking scenes in this production occurs as the interlude is played. Suddenly the auditorium is bathed in blue light, a reference to the light that makes the Grotto magic. The arches around the stage light up, and figures appear, in black capes. These reference the men of Genoa in their black, beetle-like attire and also longer dramatic traditions. Carlotta's sensitivity is up against something too hard and too ingrained in society for her and Salvago to stand up to. Figures like vultures encroach on the stage as the Duke, representing power, persuades Carlotta that Salvago isn't the man for her. Eventually, it's Tamare she succumbs to, not unwillingly.
These groups of elegant but sinister figures, sexually ambiguous, with masks and feathered headresses, are Lehnhoff trademarks, but here wonderfully evoke things that can't rationally be expressed - mystery, evil, death, power, perhap ? They prepare us for the terrible trial scene when Duke Adorno and the Council of Eight denounce Salvago, blaming him for kidnapping and corrupting the girls of Genoa. It's a horrifying moment. Salvago squirms, helpless. The aristocrats who used Elysium are rounding on him for trying to end it. He must take the blame so they won't. And he is to blame, even though he never laid a finger on anyone. His crime was trying to upset the natural order of things where beauty is beauty and ugliness ugliness. Salvago's attempts to end the orgies on the island by giving it to the city are cruelly punished. Perhaps real ugliness is so powerful that dreams like Elysium can't possibly work and Salvagos are destined to fail. And the rescued girls themselves blame him, for it was in his Elysium they were corrupted.
Then in the final interlude, the ground itself opens up, as Elysium is destroyed, revealing lots of children, half naked, some dead, their haunted eyes captured more accusingly on film than you'd ever see in the opera house. It's horrible. In a corner, Carlotta and Tamare lie together as if dead. Then Volle sings. Even if he's killed, it won't change the fact he's had the most blissful moment of his life. "Die Schönheit sei Beute das Starken". In their final confrontation, Tamare tells Salvago in no uncertain terms why he's failed. "Du sahst nur das Dunkle, die Scahtten, Gefahr und Sünde". What's worse, "ein freudlos Leben, ein langsam Seichen, oder ein Tod in Rausch und Verklärung rauscher in brünstg’r Unarmung ein selig Sterben!". A death in rapture and transfiguration? Carlotta found the ecstasy, the "drunken eyes" she dreamed of so she died happy. Definitely, Tristan und Isolde, with a dash of Tannhauser.
But this is Schreker. Tamare recounts a tale about killing a funfair fiddler with his own violin. Carlotta awakes from her swoon and screams at Salvago in revulsion . "Gebt mir Wasser" she cries, "Nein, gebt mir Wein!" Salvago crumples into a ball as the music explodes into conflagration.
Often the more you love something, the harder it is to write about it, because it's sort of disappointing to dash off something superficial. Maybe one day I'll finally get around to setting out the critique of Eisler's Hollywood Liederbuch I've been making notes on for years. But with a new production of Tristan und Isolde coming up at the Royal Opera House it's a good time to be thinking about the ideas in Die Gezeichneten. Get the DVD, because this production was fantastically expensive to mount and was designed for the specifics of the Felsenreitschule and could never be quite the same again. PLEASE see my other posts on Franz Schreker, use the search button or labels on right.
If you can't spend hundreds to get to Glyndebourne's Tristan und Isolde, there's a download available on their site. It's not the current performance but a film of the 2004 production originally directed by Nikolaus Lehnhoff, starring Nina Stemme and Robert Gambill. Check the sample videos before buying. The download process is cumbersome, and takes almost as long to load as to listen. So why are the producers so proud to announce that half the costs go to them? For £24.99 you might wait for the DVD release which is £27.99 on Opus Arte. Glyndebourne isn't backed by the super efficient Siemens, but still....
It's interesting to watch this production after the Bayreuth version also available on download for half the price. One is grim to look at but connects to the ideas in the opera. The other is glamorous visually, a "designer" look, but in which Wagner's more complex ideas don't intrude.
The design concept for this set must have looked wonderful on the drawing board. Basically the stage is ordered in steps facing the audience, with huge semi-circular arches curving round the performance space - clean and crisp. Because the same elaborate construction can be adapted in all three Acts, it's economic to present. Yet if any venue can accommodate lavish scene changes, it's Glyndebourne, where the intervals are longer than anywhere else. A lost opportunity.
What does the set tell us about the opera? Generally I much prefer abstract, uncluttered settings because they throw attention onto the music. In this case, the minimalism draws attention away without giving much in return. Perhaps the hard surfaces reflect hard situations like Mussolini architecture reflects fascist discipline. Yet, powerful as King Marke may be he's no autocrat. He's such a nice guy he doesn't even force Isolde to sleep with him because he respects her too much. Techno-brutalism isn't his style. Nor "image" because he's not a slave to keeping up surface appearances. Isolde and Brangäne spend a lot of time sitting on the steps, physically and metaphorically. They sing but don't really inhabit the stage. Of course they don't belong in Cornwall, but there's little else in the production to further draw out their plight.
After all the King lives like that too. Act Two is visually the strongest of the three, because the set is lit up by an ever changing light show, evoking the colours of stained glass, or moonlight or daybreak. The lighting also softens the harsh lines: in some ways Isolde's predicament comes about because she has been soft, healing Tristan's wounds even though he'd killed her lover. Admittedly she had a cunning plan but she's overtaken by the tenderness that is love.
Much of the acting is done by the costumes, elaborate mock-medieval get-ups that are part shroud, part Arthur Rackham romantic. These are lovely to look at, contrasting well with the spartan set. Rather like a very expensive boutique where nice things are displayed in voids of chrome and glass. But is Tristan und Isolde a paean to designer styling? Don't the wild emotions overwhelm safe, neat order? What is the nature of those extreme emotions? Are they in love at all?
Years ago I saw Herbert Wernicke's production at the Royal Opera House. Tristan and Isolde inhabited two separate white cubes, suspended in space. They didn't look at each other. It was so shocking, I thought it was "Tristan und Isolde on Prozac", emotionally deadened. Over the years, though, that production has stuck in my mind more than many things, much as I hated it then. Wernicke was making the point that T and I are fantasists, in love with the idea of love rather than with each other. They were drugged after all.
Yet Wernicke's bizarrely barren set was saying something about the deeper ideas in the opera. Tristan and Isolde both have intense personalities, troubled by traumas in their pasts. Tristan's childhood didn't prime him for warm, healthy relationships. At least, not with women. No wonder everyone's so surprised. And Isolde has a thing for extreme reactions. They live in their own feverish minds rather than in the mundane world. They get off on death and high drama rather like medieval Kurt Cobains. So what does Lehnhoff's production tell us?
It's nonsense that productions aren't supposed to have vision. Every time anything is performed it comes to life via a process of interpretation. Even when you read notes on the page and translate them into sound, you're interpreting. Because opera is visual as well as aural, direction and sets are important: a director is almost as significant as a conductor. A conductor can't "just play the notes" any more than a director can just follow the directions. In any case, composers are musicians not stage specialists. As Alban Berg said "I write for the directors of the future" who will have different resources and know how to use them. Ultimately it doesn't matter at all whether a set is period or modern, abstract of realistic. All that matters is whether it inspires insights into a deeper understanding of the work.
After 100 years of recording, we've become accustomed to thinking of opera in purely musical terms. Indeed there's a lot to be said for not watching opera at all. But Wagner wanted Gesammstkunstwerk, creations that pulled together all kinds of art to convey ideas as fully as possible. Still, in the absence of thought-provoking staging, a perfomance can stand by singing and playing alone. Nina Stemme is a lovely Isolde, vocally secure. If the harsh lighting drains her face of colour, she doesn't sing as if she's washed out. Robert Gambill isn't striking, though he isn't strained by the part's demand on higher register. Katarina Karneus can be an excellent singer, with personality, but the way this Brangäne is directed, she might as well have gone on autopilot. There is a lot more to the character, as the Marthaler Bayreuth production demonstrates. That Brangäne is a match for Isolde in terms of spirit and vitality.
This summer's Glyndebourne Tristan und Isolde is conducted by Vladimir Jurowski, with Anja Kampe and Torsten Kerl in the main roles. Last December, Jurowski conducted a concert performance of the Second Act at the Royal Festival Hall. See HERE. It wasn't that wonderful, but that's understandable given it was a work-in-progress, all parties new to the work. Kampe was much more impressive in this spring's ROH Der fliegende Hollämder where she quite frankly stole the show from a pedestrian Bryn Terfel. She may not have Stemme's experience but she'd be interesting. And we know Jurowski's good.
Subsequently I had a thought. Why not a puppet Tristan und Isolde? That would solve the problem of having good singers who can't act and singers who look good but can't sing! That would also solve the problem of people who think the opera is "boring" because there's "no action" and no sex. At last we'd get to see Morold die, Isolde's mum, Tristan's mum etc and T & I could take their clothes off. Definitely a market there. For some.....
What was all the fuss about? When this Tristan und Isolde first came to Bayreuth it was slammed. You'd think the heavens had fallen. Now Siemens AG and Bayreuther Festspiele are streaming a webcast online straight from the Bayreuth Festival, we can all see the notorious Marthaler production and wonder why it seemed so shocking.
This T&I isn't abstract or minimalist. Indeed, it's more realistic than most around these days. So the sets and costumes are vaguely 20th century? The story is about ideas, not about tapestries or fake chainmail. Indeed, the setting says quite a lot about some of the deeper themes in the opera that aren't often addressed.
So we don't see ships and sails as Isolde and Brangäne travel to Cornwall. But Isolde's a VIP, a queen to be. She doesn't travel cattle class. So Act One is set in a cavernous ballroom, with brocade banquettes, just as you'd expect on a liner. Perhaps the Titanic. Because she is doomed. The finery is shabby, you can almost smell the dust. Again, that's part of the plot: Isolde has been traded off, her power diminished. Once she would have been surrounded by retainers. Now the chairs are empty and all she has is Brangäne, the two of them huddled alone amid the faded splendour.
When Tristan comes in, she confronts him. While the long interlude plays, she overturns the empty chairs, one by one, slowly and deliberately. She overturns the order of things, this Isolde.
Act Two is even more pointed. Isolde and Brangäne are in a vast chamber, where the walls are lined with gold velvet. They're dressed in shiny silk: Isolde's dress is boxy pastel,like something the Queen, her mother and sisters used to wear: a kind of royal uniform, expensive but bland, its formality giving nothing away about the woman inside. Her arms are sheathed in white gloves. The hairdos are like armour, bouffants melded by so much hairspray they could be helmets. Those coy curls and flips aren't as soft and girlie as they seem. Royalty is about power images.
Yet Isolde isn't powerful any more. She's become a possession, a political pawn for King Marke to display. So the Barbie doll unreality underlines her status as royal Stepford Wife. Beyond the glass doors, guards stand at attention, to keep her in as well as keep others out.
When Tristan comes, they loll about on a couch. This is erotic, but in a quiet understated way. When Isolde pulls her glove off, it's as explosive as striptease, as she's revealing what's been hidden. She's also throwing down the gauntlet. Does Tristan dare respond in kind? Tristan and Isolde do compete to see who can outdo the other in terms of emotional extravagance. In this production Isolde wins hands down, partly because her Tristan isn't particularly butch. But it's also in the text. "Lausch' mir sterben" is an odd way to be horny. T&I get off on death as much as on love. Thus when Marke comes in, he doesn't rage but quietly buttons Isolde's jacket, hiding her vulnerable, soft undergarment. Propriety restored, for a while.
In the Third Act, Tristan is in a hospital bed. Why not, as he's dying. The set also references the walls of his castle, so when he sings of his childhood it's poignant. The sea, the shepherd and Isolde are real enough in his mind. Isolde arrives, wearing rough clothes, her hair shorn short. Why not? Power and glory mean nothing to her now. She's no longer playing politics but acting through selfless love. No more need for show. When she sings the Liebestod, she'll be transfigured anyway by the music. Inner beauty, all the more compelling in the grim surroundings.
Most striking in this production was Iréne Theorin's acting. This Isolde is a fully rounded personality, who fools about and stretches with the abandon of a teenager, so Brangane has to keep pushing her down. The detail of Christoph Markthaler's directing would probably have been lost in the auditorium. For example, there's a single chord of brightness in one long passage: for a moment, Isolde bursts into a robust smile, forgetting where she is. Once, she was wild and free, a powerful healer and a force for life. The spark is still there, as she moves and bends wilfully. This Isolde is a true sister of Brünnhilde, who doesn't do patriarchy. Yet now she's trapped, curtailed, like Brünnhilde made mortal. No wonder she paces the walls, searching for what lies beyond.
Theorin's singing, too, was convincing. She may not be the greatest Isolde ever, but she has little competition from Robert Dean Smith. It's not his fault that he doesn't look like a hero, but then neither did Ludwig Schnorr. The makeup that did wonders for the women didn't help him either. He looks younger and prettier than Isolde. (What primer is the makeup person using? It works) Nor does he sing like a tough knight who's had an eventful past. He's fairly solid in passages hovering at the lower end of his scale, but once the lines push upwards, he has more difficulty. At few wobbly moments, especially in his death scene. On the other hand, he's dying so maybe we should be kind. Marthaler's attention to detail should have extended to Dean Smith's acting, so Tristan wouldn't have looked so self-absorbed. He's supposed to be enthralled.
Robert Holl's King Marke was very impressive. He sang with real authority, yet laced with tenderness and maturity. This was a good characterization, well rounded. When he finds Isolde in delicto he doesn't lose his cool, but puts his arm round her in tacit support : a Melot would stab her. Though maybe not Ralf Liukas's Melot who seems a fairly unevil guy.
Good singing from Michelle Breedt as Brangäne. Her characterization is particularly interesting. Too often the part is bland, as if the role is a cipher. Here thoygh, the dynamic between the two women really is a relationship between women, not cardboard cutouts. Breedt's Brangäne has personality, wit, even sensuality as hinted in the deep rosered of her cardigan and lipstick. Her eyes sparkle, sometimes with joy becaause she loves Isolde, somethimes with terror as she rushes to get her out of jams, like when they're about to disembark. Brangäne is underrated as a character, but she's important. So it's good to study Breedt's acting and find greater depths.
Jukka Rasilainen's Kurnewal was interesting. The vaguely highland costume with kilt presumably references the character's Celtic background, but also works because it sets him apart from the others. Kurnewal, compared with Melot, is untamed, and still has the uncivilized wildness that we see in Theormin's Isolde. He paces the walls, too, and jumps up on chairs. Interesting that Tristan goes for this type. One day maybe we'll see a Tristan that expands the part and deals with his past. Tristan is not a blank, like Siegfried. Would he have been happy as King one day ? maybe it's just as well he sought out death. Apart from a few vocal quirks, (FrauWen !") Rasilainen might have a good future.
The orchestra was good, again apart from odd infelicities (the shepherd's tune slightly off kilter at first) but live performance isn't about perfection. Nor does everything in a production have to be the best or worst ever. I loved the final image, where Theorin draws the sheet that Tristan slept under over her own head, as she lies in his bed. It's erotic and yet also a gesture of the complete self denial that such intense love represents. Isolde is united with Tristan and nothing else matters any more, no more royalty, no more power games, no more pain. Once she covered herself in clothes and wigs. Now when she pulls the white sheet over her face, all the grubbiness of the world is irrelevant. She's disappeared somewhere more pure, more perfect, where self no longer exists, only the sublime. Like Brünnhilde's renunciation of the Ring and final immolation.
Get the download from the Siemens site linked above until 24 August. It's 14.90 Euro which allows repeat viewing. Much cheaper than Bayreuth and you don't have to do power games or be rich to get there, either. Now THAT is something Richard Wagner, proto socialist, would have appreciated.
