Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde
Opening Night Gala
Metropolitan Opera
September 26, 2016
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| An Isolde for our times Photo credit: Ken Howard |
Lei: As for every yearly outing
to the Met opening gala, I strutted to the Met all dressed up, but unlike other
years, my sense of anticipation was somewhat tamed. More than excited, I was
bracing myself for five hours of Wagner. Talk about a sparkly beginning to a new
season! Still, I’m for trying everything once, Wagnerian operas included, so
here we go.
Lui: In the category of best-dressed
female attire at the Metropolitan Opera gala, it was a rather lackluster soiree
(present company excluded). As far as I could tell the men took the evening. I
saw a number of fabulous, colorful tuxedo jackets that ultimately outshined the
feminine fashion on display – and one of said tuxes was even paired with a big
blue feather fan.... I mean, really, where have all the ball gowns and tiaras
gone? Please, please come back to me.
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| Metropolitan Opera in grand fashion Photo credit: Ken Howard |
Lei: Seriously, when at a gala
the gentlemen sport more eccentric attire than the ladies something’s wrong.
But back to Wagner: from the very start of the overture we knew we were in for
something very dark and stormy. We were presented with projections, as though
through a periscope, of a modern-day tempest-tossed ship at sea. Through the
arc of the opera things do not getting any lighter: we are brought into the
ship (in a claustrophobic, dollhouse-like Act I); to the deck of the ship and
an adjacent shipyard storehouse (at night, in Act II); and finally to a dark
medical room, with occasional trippy excursions into Tristan’s gloomy
hallucinatory neuroses that include a burned-out childhood home and a profoundly
guilty conscience (in Act III).
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| The somber alienation of modern love Photo credit: Ken Howard |
Lui: Mariusz Trelinski’s
was a very somber, dark, shadowy production, with tones that felt film noir-y.
I would place it temporally some time in the late twentieth century, given a
fixation on a series of modern technologies like some kind of sonar radar,
without a bleep anywhere to be found on the event horizon. In act III the stage
featured vital life signs monitors and a huge projected electronic grid.
Definitely not the latest technology, not contemporary world stuff, but close.
These seemed to represent all the rational systems of weights and measures
modern scientific thought attempts to impose on reality – the very reality that
our two love-drugged protagonists want nothing more than to escape.
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| The stairwell in the dollhouse set Photo credit: Ken Howard |
Lei: The director definitely
added a whole layer of Tristan’s tormented psyche by using recurring
projections of a little boy suffering trauma (parents’ death caused in his mind
by a fire he was somehow responsible for) and a recurring figure of a man in a
white uniform (representing possibly the consoling surrogate father figure of
King Marke that will also be a cause of grief since Tristan is in the thick of “stealing”
the unsuspecting king’s bride-to-be Isolde). While the projections were a bit
distracting, they did have their sense in terms of giving us the director’s
take on what’s wrong with Tristan. A massive guilt trip makes sense as a force
pushing him to just get away from reality and take his lady Isolde with him.
Her character is a little bit more linear, even though one would wonder why any
woman in her right mind would fall for a tortured suicidal mopey guy as
Tristan, love potion or no love potion.
Lui: By Act II it becomes clear
that it the story of a couple under the impression that the world is will and
idea until the world reveals itself to operate on its own rules. And so they
opt for complete retreat into the only world that is the true embodiment of
will by the ultimate act of will. So these two lovers desire nothing more than
infinite night, which seems to be more than a mere death impulse. Love pushed
them to the brink not only of life but also of consciousness. Tristan goes
beyond any simple desire for death or suicide as in Act III he goes on a voyage
into his soul, an inner personal exploration of his mind and his past into what
it seems to mean to possess a self. Which leads me to believe that Wagner (and
this director in turn) mean to suggest that there may be more to the mysteries
of existence than this life lived in the moment under the sun’s shimmering
light of day has in store.
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| The eclipse of sun and moon Photo credit: Met Opera |
Lei: That’s all very deep and
soul-searching, but Isolde and Tristan showed very little physical chemistry in
this production. Sure, their singing was sublime and their duets at times truly
wonderful. But their acting did not mirror either the absolute love or the
all-consuming, irresistible passion that the music and the libretto denote.
Stemme and Skelton looked like they were on an awkward first date at best, but
definitely not as if they couldn’t live without each other. When in Act II they
are surprised by the King’s men, there is nothing scandalous or outrageous
about their being together. From the libretto it sounds like they were found
half naked with their limbs intertwined but here they were just hanging out in
a hangar full of toxic waste barrels – oh yeah, Tristan emphatically took his
tie off and Isolde got rid of her coat, whoooa, sexy times!
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| All hands on deck: Romance on the bridge Photo credit: Ken Howard |
Lui: It seems to be suggested
that they engage in some kind of intimacy when the translucent scrim comes down
at the end of Act II, Scene I, but the seduction of Wagner’s music is so
hampered by this bit of stagecraft that all of his hard-core Dionysian
sensibilities are completely muted. The nookie nookie on the ship’s deck behind
the projections of the sun eclipsed by the moon was potent symbolism, but it
took the audience away from the moment. What’s with this prudery? They want to
blot out the light of the dutiful sun with the indulgence that the dark side of
the moon promises, but the magic of what makes Wagner great is gone. The
composer opens up this Venusberg-style space for us in his music and demands
our indulgence in it; especially considering absolutely excessive decadent
length he forces us to endure of it. They just did it better in the chthonian 1970s
and early 1980s productions, which are much closer to the spirit and the music
if you ask me. In Trelinski’s take the lovers seemed alienated not only from
the world but also from themselves and each other. Maybe this is a sign of the times:
the Wagnerian condition of alienation is also a uniquely modern one.
Lei: On top of the total lack of
sexual tension, costumes by Marek Adamski were particularly ugly and
uninspired. The production is already dark and stark with not much to watch. It
lasts forever. Why not give the poor public something to engage the eye a bit
more? I get the modern vibe, but still. All men were in either military
uniforms or indistinct workmen, sailor-like garb. Isolde wore shapeless PJs in
Act I, and an ill-fitting double-breasted trench coat in Acts II and III.
Granted, in the so-called outbursts of passion, the ugly coat was taken off to
reveal a plain unflattering velvet gown. And she wore combat boots with it. I
get the Birgit Nilsson line that the secret weapon for a Wagnerian soprano is
to wear comfortable shoes but still… At least Isolde had a luminous bright
blonde wig – the only ray of sunshine in the whole stark thing.
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| Hot and steamy? Amidst the toxic waste Photo credit: Ken Howard |
Lui: It was heartening to hear
some of the New York audience boo the production. But it was pretty clear that
the ones in our section were just the old stick-in-the-mud purists. I’m not
sure that type of operagoer is willing to do the heavy lifting it takes to
decode this kind of experimentation, with the emphasis on “willing.” We’re not
Wagner types and so it is already an imposition to get us to sit through five
hours of his work. So it’s all heavy lifting for us. A little less, a little
more when it comes to trying to wrap your mind around the mental masturbations
of the director never did me any harm.
Lei: It is a majestic opera and
easily my favorite Wagner outing to date (Die Meistersinger and Tannhäuser
being the first two). I’m starting to see how Wagner imbues his plots with
less emotion and more cerebral concerns. There is very little in the way of
viscerality but he sure knows how to explore an idea or two through music. I
can see why he blew the minds of so many poets and artists. You sit and trip
out on his slow but steady jaunts through a big cosmic theme. These operas are
anything but action packed, but the intellectual punch they pack is
considerable.
Lui: Which is why I’m surprised
that so many Wagner diehards are offended when a director rises to the
challenge of raising Wagner’s game with an honest new setting of his pieces.
Wagnerian operas are ripe for it and beg for further intellectualizing
elaborations in their settings. This composer adds layers of metaphor and
philosophical reverie to his core narrative material and then dramatizes not
the action but the abstraction he has imposed onto it. And then we all sit
through it, with only a portion of the superhuman endurance it demands of its orchestra
and singers.
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| Eros and Thanatos with Isolde in the hospital ward Photo credit: Ken Howard |
Lei: The singers all sounded
great and they all carried out their Herculean tasks admirably. Nina Stemme
is undeniably a little powerhouse, a force to be reckoned with from beginning
to end, sounded particularly lovely in her duets with Tristan and her final Liebestod
was pretty spectacular in its exalted lyricism. Tenor Stuart Skelton had
many wonderful moments, especially when he threw his little conniption fits.
Bass Rene Pape is always good, and as King Marke here he was guttural,
stern but round sounding, human but commanding.
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| Wagnerian love, a modern condition Photo credit: Ken Howard |
Lui: My only wish every time I
see Wagner is that there isn’t more sheer pleasure taken in the singing as an
aesthetic end in itself. Rather than poetry he is a prose composer. What he
demands of his singers is sizable force and endurance rather than lustrous
beauty and finesse. Although these operas seem to consist of a lot of yelling
in German over a lot of music, I nevertheless come away feeling that most of
that music was ineffably gorgeous and abundantly pleasurable, despite the fact
that I never come away humming any of the tunes themselves. Tonight’s musical
takeaway though was the Tristan chord and several of the other stock phrases or
mottoes that very unambiguously punctuate this piece. It is said that the music
was born first, and then the words, which I can believe since the musical ideas
really guide you through the plot far more than the words or even the story.
Lei: Based on a superficial
exposure to no more than three or four different recordings of this opera, Sir
Simon Rattle seemed to favor a rather languid, or dreamy take on the score.
His tempos often felt slowed down, drawn out, as though to match the pacing of
the orchestra to the oneiric vision of the stage direction and seamless flow of
the set transitions from one convoluted early scene to the next. The
transitions during the long semi-conscious death sequence in Act III were also
sufficiently dreamy. Everybody involved had us all hanging on the cusp of
consciousness.
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| Betrayal of the "father" by the son Photo credit: Ken Howard |
Lui: Wagner is definitely not in
a hurry to get anywhere. And so why should we be? If there is one thing he is
good at it is dilation and delay. Or as Rossini said in a letter to Emile
Naumann in 1867: “Monsieur Wagner a de beaux moments, mais de mauvais quarts d’heure.”
In Tristan und Isolde by the end he truly makes his points effectively,
but by no means economically. Our Monsieur is long-winded but
breathtakingly beautiful, I’ll give him that. He takes a very long time to make
his points. All the better if a director gives us a little something to work
with while we get there.
Lei: After seeing Tristan und
Isolde I do finally get Wagner’s lure. I am not a convert by any stretch but I
see how it could be someone’s piece of cake. There’s something about these waves
of beautiful complex intense music that wash over you and carry you places for
several hours. The sung-through business though leaves me more lukewarm, it’s
definitely a challenge for singers and impressive to hear and does have some
peak moments. But also so much space-filling fluff in which characters go on
and on elaborating on themes and ideas. Wagner’s work is so wordy and cerebral.
I prefer concise, to-the-point visceral passion, less words but more effective
and memorable ones. But that is the bel
canto lover in me speaking.
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| Wagner goes noir Photo credit: Ken Howard |
Lui: This was more satisfying by
far than last year’s Otello though. Despite its liberties, I left
feeling exalted and stimulated by such an intense evening at the Met. Wagner
may be a bit wordy in his orchestrations and overly verbose in his libretti,
but tonight came off like a tightly clenched fist. A city like New York
deserves its edgy fresh takes on the classics, if nothing else then to prove
the value of the traditionalists’ approach. A healthy balance of this slightly
more intellectually challenging fare plays well against big period pieces in
tights and powdered wigs, cuirasses and broadswords does the city and most of
all the art form a world of good.
Lei: Fair enough – now that I
checked the Tristan box, it’s time for some real pleasure: I am
definitely extremely excited to get my Rossini fix with Italiana in Algeri
and Guillaume Tell this month!
– Lei & Lui
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| Of alienation and modern love Photo credit: Ken Howard |
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