Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde holds a unique position in the annals of opera. To some, it is the peak of the art form; its supreme achievement. To others, it is an interesting work full of declamatory singing, occasional bombast, and much inspired music. I fall into the second camp. Regardless of where you’re positioned, it takes great singers and an equally great conductor to bring the opera to its full realization. Today’s performance met all these criteria.
The first thing to get out of your head when listening to Tristan is all the turgid teutonic psychobabble that Wagner imputed to the libretto. It’s just a love story gone wrong.
The two title roles require singers of the highest caliber, and the case of Tristan the stamina of a marathon runner. Michael Spyres was a Tristan for the ages. His performance as the knight from Cornwall was by far the best he has done at the Met. The American tenor has more registers than NCR. He was using his darkest one this afternoon. The role pushes the tenor’s middle voice beyond the breaking point of almost any normal singer. Spyre’s voice sounded as fresh at the end of his delerium scene in Act 3 as it did at the start of the opera. He must have vocal cords of steel. He sang with passion, emotional insight, and vocal power. His was as fine a tenor performance as I’ve heard in the past 70 years. He’s said he’d like to sing Verdi’s Otello. He could easily do it justice and probably sing Iago at every other performance. If you missed today’s show, Spyre’s performance is reason enough to catch the encore next week.
While all the singers were in excellent form, the relatively weakest outing was from the singer who has received the most praise – Lise Davidsen. Ms Davidsen’s vocal placement is not quite right for Isolde; she lacks sufficient chest support. Her voice without it does not sound as full as the role requires. The deficit prevents an otherwise very good interpretation from reaching the level of Kirsten Flagstad, whom I never heard in performance, or Birgit Nilsson, whom I did. Still, she was a fine Isolde. Her acting could use a bit of an upgrade, however. She seems to equate coyness and petulance with passion. She was not as involved in her persona as were the rest of the principals.
Ekaterina Gubanova has been singing Brangäne for 20 years. She has the role down to a perfect period. Her voice and characterization were exactly what the role demanded.
Similarly, Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny was vocally opulent as Tristan’s loyal retainer Kurwenal. He has a rich and focused voice, which, combined with great acting ability, made him a standout in what can often be a supporting role.
Met regular Ryan Speedo Green was convincing as the remarkably forgiving King Marke. He’s moving up to Wotan in the Met’s upcoming Ring Series. He seems ready for the role. The remainder of the cast were all up to the highest standards.
Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin led the Met Orchestra in a stirring reading of Wagner’s revelatory score. The orchestra sang and pulsed with passion depending on the event. It was as good an orchestral performance of Tristan as I’ve yet to hear.
I am less sanguine about Yuval Sharon’s new production. It has video projections (every new production at the Met seems obligated to have them), multiple body doubles, and strange oval-shaped structures that move T&I around for no discernible purpose. Isolde gives birth to a baby just before singing the Liebestod. King Marke takes the newborn as the opera ends. The Met spent a lot of money on a lot of high-tech tchotchkes that didn’t add anything to the outstanding performance by the singers and players.
Tristan und Isolde, as I alluded to above, depends on the singers and orchestra. When you’ve got them, you don’t need much more. The Met had them and could have saved a lot of money at a time when they haven’t got very much by doing a simpler staging.
Director Sharon said the close-up video projections were to satisfy the public’s familiarity with large depictions of action on screens. So what did video director Halvorson do? He got his camera up so close that many of the projections were out of sight. No great loss, however.
As I said above, catch the re-run if you missed today’s show. While the entire cast was first rate, Spyre’s performance was extraordinary. Fortunately its recorded and can be enjoyed by those who come to this performance as time passes.
Tristan und Isolde
Richard Wagner
Tristan………..Michael Spyres
Isolde……….Lise Davidsen
Brangäne……….Ekaterina Gubanova
King Marke……….Ryan Speedo Green
Kurwenal……….Tomasz Konieczny
Melot……….Thomas Glass
Sailor’s Voice……….Ben Reisinger
Shepherd………..Jonas Hacker
Steersman……….Ben Brady
Tristan Double……….Tim Bendernagel
Tristan Double……….Simon Catillon
Isolde Double……….Cecily Campbell
Isolde Double……….Caitlin Scranton
English HornSolo ……….Pedro R. Díaz
Conductor……….Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Production……….Yuval Sharon
Set Designer……….Es Devlin
Costume Designer……….Clint Ramos
Lighting Designer……….John Torres
Projection Designer……….Jason H. Thompson
Choreographer……….Annie-B Parson
Video Designer……….Ruth Hogben
Video Director……….Gary Halvorson.
I saw the rebroadcast on Wednesday. (Our local, upstate NY movie theater couldn’t successfully get the video feed, as well as the audio feed, on Saturday.) My verdict: great singing (except for Ryan Speedo Green), terrible staging.
It was a triumph for Davidsen and Spyres, whose voices sound good together. I also didn’t think the Liebestod was the best moment for Davidsen–but almost everything else was fabulous. She made the Act I scenes with Brangaene compelling. I hope there is a bright future, including at the Met, for Spyres.
I heard most of Saturday’s audio, and didn’t like the Brangaene and Kurwenal: to me, their voices sounded wobbly and ‘wooly’ (I guess I mean, not clear). But the performances (of Gubanova and Konieczny) struck me differently when I saw them in the HD. I liked them! Strange; I guess whatever vocal limitations they may have were way more than offset by their excellent stage presence and chemistry with their respective principals. To my mind, though, Ryan Speedo Green was miscast as King Marke; to me, he seemed to growl his way through the performance. Not a beautiful sound.
The staging, in my opinion, was awful (which bodes ill for the Ring that Sharon and the Met are apparently planning). The HD audience at least gets to enjoy some close-ups, during which we don’t have to see what they’re doing to the whole stage. For reasons I don’t understand, the stage was constricted and limited by building a huge circular (sometimes oval) platform in the middle of it, where the cast often went to stand or crouch while singing. Very abstract; and enhanced from time to time by garish lighting. Curiously, amidst the abstraction there were some very specific items, from time to time: in Act III, we saw a display of modern(ish) surgical tools, as if those were going to be employed to cure Tristan’s wounds; at one point, Isolde had a box of safety matches with which to light a candle. There was even a white bowl, or plate, with some purple flowers around it–and eventually we saw Melot smashing the bowl (or plate) when he uncovered the lovers’ adultery. Maybe the worst of these ideas was the baby that Isolde bore, just before singing the Liebestod (fortunately, it was given to one of the two Isoldes-in-dumbshow–there were also two Tristans-in-dumbshow–to mime going through childbirth), which King Marke is left holding in his arms as the final curtain falls.
All of this must have been symbolic, but it was lost on me. Why did the circular platform divide into two circles, in Act II, during the love duet, with the lovers sometimes together in one, sometimes divided from each other? Worst of all, who thought it added anything to reduce the platform to a shape that mimicked the blade of a knife, in which we saw Tristan and Isolde in the scene in Act I that climaxes with drinking the potion ?
I wouldn’t expect a literal, overly detailed staging. But maybe something, however simple, that suggests the mythic, heroic world this story comes from. I would have thought that the experience of being on a ship was important to Act I; but the only hint of “the sea” came in Act III, via video of waves projected onto the stage.
I liked having the English horn player on stage, in Act III, dressed all in white (like a group of performers whose exact function in the story I couldn’t really place); this brought an important part of the music front and center. I missed having Brangaene in Act II watching over the lovers and trying to warn them; her voice was heard, of course, but she was apparently offstage (not in one of the circles, as far as I could see).
The staging shouldn’t get in the way of the music, in my opinion.