Classical
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Wagner: Tristan Und Isolde
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I can't resist the chance to write the first review of this DVD, even though it has not yet been released, and the only version I have seen is a disc in somewhat soft focus and with no subtitles (but an unbeatable price) from Premiere Opera. That said, I will go out on a limb and proclaim this as my favorite "Tristan" DVD.It's true that this Heiner Muller production faces very strong competition from both the Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and Nikolaus Lehnhoff versions--all three are visually and conceptually striking (Peter Konwitschny's production, probably the most daring of all, has some brilliant moments but is saddled with too many inexplicable, maddening misfires to stand in the first rank). If Amazon someday releases last year's televised La Scala performance directed by Patrice Chereau, which (like the Muller and Ponnelle) features Barenboim conducting and (like the Muller and Konwitschny) offers Waltraud Meier as Isolde, it will most likely join the above big three in the upper echelon.Like Ponnelle and Lehnhoff, Muller creates an arrestingly beautiful production, though more austere than the other two. The German playwright allegedly tried to take a colder, more clinical view of Wagner's great paean to unfulfilled passion, but his Bayreuth "Tristan" manages to be all the more affecting because of its sober restraint (a restraint very much in keeping, after all, with Wagner's lovers, who spend an entire stolen night of love doing nothing but philosophizing). The production is abstract but visually enticing, featuring a recurring motif of vibrant, luminous squares reminiscent of Rothko's paintings (during the preludes to each of the three acts, the camera slowly pans across a number of thematically related abstract paintings--a far more satisfying visual complement to the music than is found in either the Ponelle or Lehnhoff videos).Muller is helped immeasurably by his two leads, both assuming their respective roles for the first time. The young Waltraud Meier is an even better actress (and even more beautiful) than the formidable Nina Stemme in the Lehnhoff production (and preferable on both counts to Johanna Meier in the Ponnelle). Some have objected on principle to a mezzo singing Isolde, but I find Meier up to the role's vocal demands, particularly at this relatively early point in her career. And while she apparently didn't enjoy working under Muller's direction, her mesmerizing performance is nonetheless the soul of this production. Siegfried Jerusalem, his hair effectively pulled back in a tight ponytail, seems to me vocally and visually preferable to both Rene Kollo for Ponnelle and John Gambill for Lehnhoff, though he is less varied than either as an actor, particularly in the great test of the wounded knight's Act III delirium.To touch upon some of the production's more distinctive features . . . Act I takes place in a stark, simple boxlike set in browns and golds, with Isolde's chamber appearing as no more than a recessed section at the front of the raked stage. All the characters wear severe black cassocks, along with odd but strangely arresting clear plastic yokes which signify their enthrallment to the mundane world of obligations and social ties (the lovers remove theirs upon drinking the love potion). The great second act love duet takes place, not in a garden, but amidst rows of armored breastplates, suggesting an armory or a graveyard, and perhaps indicating the soulless uniformity against which the lovers try to carve out their fragile union. The lovers are still in black, but now wear more flowing robes with blue accents that effectively match the colored streaks in their hair. In keeping with Muller's cooler view, the rapturous meeting of the lovers is studiously underplayed and they remain reticent about making actual contact, but nonetheless at key moments the camera closes in on striking, still tableaus of them sitting back to back or in each other's arms. The bleak final act is set in a large yet claustrophic box strewn with rubble, the characters dressed in dirty, ragged coats. It's Wagner by way of Samuel Beckett's "Endgame," a notion brilliantly crystallized in the presence of a blind watchman, evoking the utter futility of Tristan's longing for Isolde. Towards the end of the opera, Muller shows his disdain for Wagner's rather hasty fight sequences by rendering them in what has to be the most perfunctory stage combat ever seen. But Meier's final liebestod, rapturously sung as she stands in a luminous golden gown against a glowing gold square, ends the performance on an image of sublime, ethereal beauty reminiscent of early Italian Renaissance religious iconography.Having gone on at such length already, I'll conclude this discussion, sit back, and wait to see if other reviewers share my enthusiasm for this wonderful production.
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