|
|
|
|
ConcertoNet |
Susan Hall |
|
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde, Bayerische Staatsoper ab 29.6.2021 |
|
Tristan and Isolde Unite Forever in Munich
|
|
The Munich State Opera featured a new production of Tristan and Isolde in
its annual festival. Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Harteros teamed up as the lead
characters. In some ways, they are an unusual casting choice. Kaufmann in
appearance is more desirable than most tenors who have filled the role. In
the US, he is regarded as a matinee idol. Yet he is now the master of some
of opera’s most challenging roles: Walther von Stolzing, Parsifal,
Lohengrin, and Siegmund.
Harteros, who is on her way to marry a King
as the opera opens, is truly regal. While her acting suggests a real human
being, as does the timbre of her voice, she also has an out-of-this-world
quality. She does not stand and deliver. In motion all the time, this
physical actor moves with music’s beat. She gestures with her arms, closing
them to contain, and opening them wide to receive her new feelings and
Tristan. Her voice is lovely. Yet, when the drama or emotion demands, she
can move into an almost harsh speech.
Polish theatre director
Krzysztof Warlikowski, a regular in Munich, has created the new production.
While he cleaves to the composer’s notes on production elements, he brings a
fresh view to the story’s demands, and to the suggestions of the score.
Wagner wrote that Isolde should be introduced on a couch. Warlikowski has
tucked one into the corner of the stage. It is a cross between magic carpet
and psychoanalyst’s workplace.
Water is a recurring theme in the
opera. Sea journeys precede the action, and are the setting of the opening
Act, as Tristan accompanies Isolde to her new home as the bride of King
Marke. In the third act, Tristan awaits the arrival of Isolde by sea. Again,
Warlikowski is inventive in his suggestions of water. A drop down frame is
filled with seagulls in flight. The lovers drown not only in love-death, but
in water at the end of the opera. Malgorzata Szczesniak contributed to the
sets. Kamil Polak filmed evocative video inserts.
The main stage is
an elegant state room, whose walls are of burnished brown-gold wood. A
double world of stick-like humans opens the opera and peoples the stage in
the third act. Warlikowski continously plays with the question of what is
and is not real. While this may sound complicated, the elements fit the
story well and do not interfere with listening pleasure. A triumph in its
own way.
The supporting cast is superb. Okka von der Damerau is the
go-to Brangäne today. She gives an unusually warm performance, supporting
the complex woman she serves. So too does Wolfgang Koch as Kurwenal bolster
his beloved friend, Tristan.
Kaufmann is moving firmly into the
Wagner roles. His Parsifal at the Metropolitan Opera was masterful and
moving. He brings these same qualities to Tristan. His voice is smooth,
whether it emerges from his head or the back of his throat. This contrasts
with Harteros when they are mimicking each other’s words. Their voices blend
well in duet.
Kirill Petrenko is a known quantity who always
surprises. He has a delicate touch with the subtleties of this score. He
dares to move the music slowly, as Leonard Bernstein did in his great
performance in Munich in 1981. Greatness is not transferable. Yet Petrenko
has found his way to an extraordinary musical experience by taking the same
slow tempi Bernstein did. Wagner wrote that his music could not be played
slowly enough. This is a daring course, because it exposes instrumentalists
and singers alike. This Munich performance revealed the tortured, anguished
underbelly of the score, as each detail became part of the whole. Superb
instrumentalists are part of the whole. One notes the English horn, the bass
clarinet accompanying King Marke and the solo violin which sings with Okka
von der Damerau.
The subject of the opera is endings. What is humanly
possible and what must be deferred to an after life, interpretations of the
ancient myth ask. The composer may well have been responding not only to his
need to exceed himself and defy music’s rules, but also to his personal
feelings for the wife of his Swiss host. Wagner liked the ladies. Some he
loved in the extreme. This feeling is explored in Tristan. Bruno Walter
remarked, after conducting a performance of Tristan, “This isn’t music any
longer.”
Harteros is cool, and an object at the opera’s start. By the
time she joins Tristan in death, she is transported to the extremes of
feeling and takes us out of the world with her in her rush of ecstatic words
at the end of the third act.
Tristan and Isolde is often cited as a
pivotal opera. What followed was inevitably influenced by it. The
repetitions of Philip Glass and John Adams come right out of this score. Yet
for intense emotionality, Wagner himself remains not just a pivot, but the
consummate master of musical feeling. The Munich State Opera captures this.
Kirill Petrneko makes his final mark on the house with a definitive gesture,
a performance of this opera that few can deliver as he does in its sublime
intensity.
|
|
|
|
|
|