The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera by Rupert Christiansen Page B
Authors: Rupert Christiansen
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productions of this opera have been those which do not get too bogged down in interpretation.For Covent Garden, Elijah Moshinsky staged the piece within a gauzy white box, the costuming and props tastefully evoking the early medieval period, and its sheer unforced simplicity proved remarkably effective; Robert Wilson’s even bleaker visual concept for the Met was less successful.One famous Bayreuth production, first seen in 1987, was staged by the film director Werner Herzog, who envisaged the opera in a landscape of snow-covered desolation and ruin, set against a black sky in the dead of winter.
Alas, the magic of theatre often seems to fluff the appearance of the swan-drawn boat and the descending dove – moments which are more likely to induce giggles than the rapture the composer intended.
Recordings
CD: Siegfried Jerusalem (Lohengrin); Claudio Abbado (cond.).DG 437 808 2
Video: Cheryl Studer (Elsa); Woldemar Nelsson (cond.).Bayreuth Festival production.Philips 070 411 3
Tristan und Isolde
Three acts. First performed Munich, 1865.
Libretto by the composer
In the score of Tristan, Wagner dissolves the rules of harmony and key which had prevailed for a hundred and fifty years,thus opening up a new series of possibilities for western music.The opera is based on the medieval poem by Gottfried von Strassburg, but also has its roots in Wagner’s passionate affair with Mathilde, the wife of his patron Otto von Wesendonck, and in his reading of Buddhism and the philosophy of Artur Schopenhauer.Both of these led him to the idea, suggested in the meditations of Tristan and Isolde’s Act II duet, that only by renouncing life and transcending worldly phenomena can one attain inner peace and wisdom.
Yet the score is also graphically sensual in its implication that physical sex is the way to nirvana, and the cautious, rational voices of Brangäne, Kurwenal and Marke are all given their due.Should we regard Tristan and Isolde as heroic witnesses to the ultimate truth, or a self-centred pair locked into suicidal folly?The greatness of the opera is that it allows both possibilities.
Plot
A prisoner of war, Isolde is being brought from Ireland to Cornwall to marry Tristan’s uncle, King Marke.On board Tristan’s ship, she furiously tells her servant Brangäne how Tristan, disguised as Tantris, murdered her lover Morold and then came to her in search of balm to heal his wounds.Overcome by his pitiful pleas, she could not bring herself to kill him: but now she hands him what she believes to be a death potion which she too will swallow rather than marry King Marke.But Brangäne, fearing Isolde’s suicidal impulses, substitutes a love potion, and when Tristan and Isolde have drunk it, they fall rapturously into each other’s arms.The ship reaches Cornwall.
Isolde is forced to marry King Marke, but while he is out hunting one night, she resolves to meet Tristan.Brangäne, who repents of her substitution of the love potion, warns her against the machinations of the envious courtier Melot, but Isolde is oblivious and commands Brangäne to extinguish the torch at her door – the signal for Tristan to approach.
Through a long and ecstatic duet, Tristan and Isolde reflect on the meaning of their love and aspire to a dissolution of their individual identities at the ultimate level of sexual passion.As the music rises to an orgasmic pitch, King Marke returns from the hunt and is led to the lovers’ lair by the treacherous Melot.Marke mourns his nephew Tristan’s betrayal of his trust, but Tristan is oblivious.He asks Isolde to follow him into eternal night, and she assents.Tristan throws himself on Melot’s sword.
Tristan is dying in disgrace in his castle in Brittany, attended by his bluff but loyal servant Kurwenal.He can think of nothing but the prospect of being reunited with Isolde and waits day and night for her ship to arrive.When it is finally sighted, he deliriously tears the bandages from the fatal wounds inflicted
Alas, the magic of theatre often seems to fluff the appearance of the swan-drawn boat and the descending dove – moments which are more likely to induce giggles than the rapture the composer intended.
Recordings
CD: Siegfried Jerusalem (Lohengrin); Claudio Abbado (cond.).DG 437 808 2
Video: Cheryl Studer (Elsa); Woldemar Nelsson (cond.).Bayreuth Festival production.Philips 070 411 3
Tristan und Isolde
Three acts. First performed Munich, 1865.
Libretto by the composer
In the score of Tristan, Wagner dissolves the rules of harmony and key which had prevailed for a hundred and fifty years,thus opening up a new series of possibilities for western music.The opera is based on the medieval poem by Gottfried von Strassburg, but also has its roots in Wagner’s passionate affair with Mathilde, the wife of his patron Otto von Wesendonck, and in his reading of Buddhism and the philosophy of Artur Schopenhauer.Both of these led him to the idea, suggested in the meditations of Tristan and Isolde’s Act II duet, that only by renouncing life and transcending worldly phenomena can one attain inner peace and wisdom.
Yet the score is also graphically sensual in its implication that physical sex is the way to nirvana, and the cautious, rational voices of Brangäne, Kurwenal and Marke are all given their due.Should we regard Tristan and Isolde as heroic witnesses to the ultimate truth, or a self-centred pair locked into suicidal folly?The greatness of the opera is that it allows both possibilities.
Plot
A prisoner of war, Isolde is being brought from Ireland to Cornwall to marry Tristan’s uncle, King Marke.On board Tristan’s ship, she furiously tells her servant Brangäne how Tristan, disguised as Tantris, murdered her lover Morold and then came to her in search of balm to heal his wounds.Overcome by his pitiful pleas, she could not bring herself to kill him: but now she hands him what she believes to be a death potion which she too will swallow rather than marry King Marke.But Brangäne, fearing Isolde’s suicidal impulses, substitutes a love potion, and when Tristan and Isolde have drunk it, they fall rapturously into each other’s arms.The ship reaches Cornwall.
Isolde is forced to marry King Marke, but while he is out hunting one night, she resolves to meet Tristan.Brangäne, who repents of her substitution of the love potion, warns her against the machinations of the envious courtier Melot, but Isolde is oblivious and commands Brangäne to extinguish the torch at her door – the signal for Tristan to approach.
Through a long and ecstatic duet, Tristan and Isolde reflect on the meaning of their love and aspire to a dissolution of their individual identities at the ultimate level of sexual passion.As the music rises to an orgasmic pitch, King Marke returns from the hunt and is led to the lovers’ lair by the treacherous Melot.Marke mourns his nephew Tristan’s betrayal of his trust, but Tristan is oblivious.He asks Isolde to follow him into eternal night, and she assents.Tristan throws himself on Melot’s sword.
Tristan is dying in disgrace in his castle in Brittany, attended by his bluff but loyal servant Kurwenal.He can think of nothing but the prospect of being reunited with Isolde and waits day and night for her ship to arrive.When it is finally sighted, he deliriously tears the bandages from the fatal wounds inflicted
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