Tristan und Isolde on TV on 7 Dec. 2007
@zonnet.nl Herman van der Woude
forget this announcement, but I just found out, that Arte is to
transmit a live performance from the Scala, Milan, next week Friday of
Tristan und Isolde. The conductor will be Daniel Barenboim, the staging
is by Patricia Carmine. Tristan will be sung by Ian Storey, Isolde by
Waltraud Meier and King Marke by Matti Salminen.
Most of us will need a satellite dish for Astra on 19 degrees East. The
performance starts at 19:00 hr MET (18:00 WET) and will end around
midnight. Radio listeners can switch to the German station NDR Kultur,
which starts broadcasting an hour earlier.
I have no idea about the stage direction...
Cheers!
--
Met vriendelijke groet
Herman van der Woude
hvdwoude @ zonnet.nl
spaties toegevoegd om spam te vermijden/spaces added to avoid spam
Emma
> I have no idea about the stage direction...
>
Peduzzi. Rumours says the 1st act looks like a roman wall, the 2nd act like
a round stone and the 3rd act a seawall.
/Emma
Mike Scott Rohan
from "Emma" <anin...@hotmail.com> contains these words:
"Oh Wall, oh Wall, thou sweet and lovely Wall...."
Many thanks for this, Hermann and Emma -- will do my best to catch it.
Arte seem to be on an opera kick again -- although this week's
Dreigroschenoper was hardly wth the effort.
Cheers,
Mike
Paul Danaher
...
> "Oh Wall, oh Wall, thou sweet and lovely Wall...."
>
> Many thanks for this, Hermann and Emma -- will do my best to catch it.
> Arte seem to be on an opera kick again -- although this week's
> Dreigroschenoper was hardly wth the effort.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mike
I agree - I wouldn't give you tuppence for it ...
@zonnet.nl Herman van der Woude
saw the performance on television last Friday and overall I can agree
with this critic.
The production was staged by Patrice Chéreau and his team. My first
impression was that it continued in the same manner as 26 years ago
Gotterdammerung in Bayreuth ended. Lots of blue-greyish colors and
workers in stead of sailors. There were moments I longed back for the
production made by Ponnelle in Bayreuth (available on DVD), which is
still my favourite (in spite of some alterations Ponnelle allowed
himself in the third act).
I didn't like the idea of Isolde and Brangane on the deck of the vessel
(was it a vessel - it could also have been the courtyard of a prison),
surrounded by working and gazing sailormen. Afterall, she /is/ an Irish
princess on her way to meet with her royal bridegroom and not some deck
passenger.
I also did not like the way the love scene was done in the second act.
It was as if two close friends were having a philosofical debate, but
the atmosphere changed when the two 'lovers' were discovered by King
Marke. From this point on, the performance became very intense, also in
the third act, where I welcomed the fact that there were more, far more
people on the stage than only Tristan, Kurwenal and the shepherd. Here
you saw hands, friends, who helped the ill Tristan and later on fought
and died when King Marke arrived. Tristan died convincingly, and so was
later Isolde's Liebestod.
I personally found Ian Storey disappointing as Tristan. He had no
stable voice. Were it the nerves, as is suggested in the critic below?
I know it was his debut as Tristan, but a professional singer must cope
professionally with a debut. Chéreau made him to old for this role too,
with greying hair Tristan looked like fourtyish, going to be fifty.
The idea of Chéreay to stage a young Kurwenal I did welcome. He was
well sung by Gerd Grochowski. And as the critic below states, Waltraut
Meier as Isolde was superb. Less convincing I found Michelle DeYoung as
Brangane (who was turned in a very old maid). Matti Salminen, looking
like an old grandfather-king, sung his role as one could expect from
him. Intense, convincing and by looking that old, one could not expect
any Isolde to become in love with him.
The smaller roles were sufficiently sung and acted.
The orchestra (and chorus) of La Scala were very well conducted by
Daniel Barenboim. Maybe the musical direcors of the televsion company
(Rai, I suppose) were to blame that the deep bass tones of the
beginning of the third act were a bit disappointing...
Chéreau is an actors' director, not a singers' director, but he manages
to turn singers into actors and that I could see. It added to the story
and it is only a pity, that he could not find a good way to show us the
love duet (yes, a real 'love scene') in the second act.
In total, I liked the performance a lot and I am glad I saw and heard
it.
The New York Times:
‘Tristan’ Harmonies Trump La Scala’s Labor Discord
By Michael Kimmelman
Published: December 10, 2007
MILAN — The gaudiest event of the opera season in Europe, La Scala’s
opener on Dec. 7 was a sub-lime new version of “Tristan und Isolde,”
directed by Patrice Chéreau under the baton of the house’s new
principal guest conductor, Daniel Barenboim.
Operagoers and bigwigs attended the La Scala season opener, “Tristan
und Isolde,” on Friday.
Ian Storey and Waltraud Meier in Patrice Chéreau’s production of
Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” at La Scala in Milan.
It was the first “Tristan” here in nearly 30 years. This being Italy,
where everything must be a drama, offstage and on, the performance was
preceded by much fuss and chaos. Workers at the opera house,
exasperated by a longstanding, unresolved dispute over salaries and
bonuses, derailed two pre-gala performances of the Verdi Requiem, which
Mr. Barenboim was to conduct last month, and the imbroglio threatened
to undo the opening before a strike was averted at the 11th hour.
One newspaper reported that orchestra players would still protest by
playing in shirtsleeves rather than dinner jackets, which in Milan, the
fashion capital, is apparently just shy of not showing up to play at
all. In the event they dressed up like everyone else. (Mr. Barenboim
went shoeless, due to some last-minute wardrobe malfunction, he later
told Agence France-Presse, although the mishap clearly made not the
slightest musical difference). As scheduled, Italy’s haute couture
designers got to flaunt their ingenuity at cantilevering and
buttressing. Perfumed waves of mostly aged Milanese; the presidents of
Italy, Greece, Germany and Austria; the sheik of Qatar; and pomaded
bankers, carting tickets priced up to $2,900, arrived under the glare
of spotlights and television cameras before gawking mobs behind metal
barriers, braving the cold and drizzle.
The offstage distractions instantly ended once Mr. Barenboim picked up
the baton. He led a grave and shockingly intense performance, one all
the more remarkable considering that half of the opera’s starring duo
was a disappointment.
The veteran mezzo Waltraud Meier was Isolde. She was marvelous. A
poised, unflaggingly intelligent musician able to call upon reserves of
power, she sang without glamour but with her familiar drama and
intensity. Tristan was Ian Storey, a British tenor favored by Mr.
Barenboim who must have been suffering from nerves in his first time
singing the part at La Scala.
It’s an impossible role, it’s true, but Wagnerites know not to expect
perfection. With a pleasant, warm voice Mr. Storey struggled to rise
above the orchestra and to heights of passion. Grizzled and enormous,
he looked the part, at least, and he acted decently.
Mr. Chéreau, the distinguished director, proved how much acting counts.
He stripped away all the usual silly Wagner theatrics and had the cast
make every little movement count too. The chorus stayed in the
background, stirring unobtrusively. Shifts of gaze and small gestures
conveyed deep emotions. After the doomed lovers drank the fateful
potion in Act I, they separated, lingering nearly motionless for
several minutes, waiting to die, before Tristan, approaching Isolde,
slowly fell before her, bowing his head, which she gently touched as
Wagner’s famous love theme swelled.
That subtle exchange of gestures was then echoed hours later, at the
instant that Tristan really does die, a moment whose authenticity
stunned the audience. There was another moment like it, when Tristan
admitted to King Marke his betrayal with Isolde, and the two men
silently embraced, a clench that would have seemed inexplicable had it
not already been made clear, in all sorts of unspoken as well as spoken
ways, just how much they still loved each other as virtual father and
son.
A few Italian critics grumbled during intermission about that embrace,
and also about Richard Peduzzi’s gray-on-gray sets, which actually
dovetailed nicely with Mr. Chéreau’s moody, uncluttered direction. This
is one of those operas that prosper without too many stage pictures,
and the pocked, white-washed ancient brick wall that was the
production’s scenic leitmotif, along with a few cypress trees and a
rusty, fog-shrouded freighter, sufficed to evoke an industrial, remote
northern clime of indeterminate modernity. The mood vaguely brought to
mind an Ingmar Bergman movie. Wearing long dusters, black and white
respectively, Tristan and Marke strode around like a pair of stoic,
depressed Scandinavian sailors.
As Marke, Matti Salminen, his mature voice sometimes hoarse, befitting
the part, performed magnificently. The audience yelped and stomped
during his curtain call. Michelle DeYoung, the gifted American mezzo,
brought tenderness to Brangäne, Isolde’s attendant.
The heart and soul of “Tristan” comes down to the orchestra, and Mr.
Barenboim, who knows this op-era as well as anyone, drew rich, densely
textured, multilayered sounds from his players. Occasionally they
drowned out the singers, but that’s always the case; and more
important, where they needed to, they stretched aching melodies as if
toward infinity.
Mr. Barenboim is partly filling the job that Riccardo Muti vacated two
years ago, when he quit here in a huff, and the Scala audience, to make
apparent that it welcomed their new principal guest conductor, cheered
him both after the second intermission and again when he shepherded the
orchestra onto the stage for a lengthy curtain call.
The ovations lasted a good quarter of an hour. And from the highest red
velvet and gold tiers, flowers showered down, pelting a grateful,
beaming Ms. Meier, her face still blood-streaked from the last act.
"Here ends the lecture from The New York Times!"
Emma
but I´ll have to say I found the whole production breathtaking. I simply
cannot remember ever being so moved by an opera performance - and I have
only viewed it on my computer screen - I can hardly wait until I actually
will attend the real thing in Milan next week.
I realize that opinions vary on Chéreau´s staging, but in my view he did
virtually everything right - and as you Herman I several times thought the
staging looked like a continuation of the 1976 Bayreuth Götterdämmerung
(particularly the concrete wall reminded me of the dam with the
Rhine-maidens). I suppose those who dislike this Ring will also dislike this
Tristan. They are very much alike in both conception and execution. In my
view, Chéreau´s strenght as a director here is a combination of keeping
things very simple on stage and managing to create convincing interactions
between the main characters - he really makes the singers act.
Like almost everyone else I found Barenboim superb and Waltraud Meier was
completely breathtaking as Isolde. Her performance as Isolde (both here and
elsewhere) is the singularly most moving operatic experience I´ve ever had.
Regarding Ian Storey, I think he did a good job - he looked the part and
acted well, which is more than can be said for most of the other Tristan´s
around. I agree that his voice was not completely stable throughout the
entire range, but over-all I am not sure whom of the other Tristan singers
of today I would rather have seen. And he looked quite good next to Waltraud
Meier. Furthermore, I thought that Storey was quite moving in the third act.
Matti Salminen was convincing as Marke, and as Herman, I found Michelle
DeYoung as Brangäne the less convincing of them all. Her singing sounded
shrill and off-pitch at many places, a negative surprise for me since I
heard her as Kundry 6 months ago, where she was in good voice. Also Gerd
Grochowski as Kurwenal both sang and acted well.
/Emma
For those interested I´ve posted two video-clips from the performance here
http://mostlyopera.blogspot.com/2007/12/blog-post.html
@zonnet.nl Herman van der Woude
Emma,
I tried to send you an email, but it failed. In short: I wish you a
wonderful night in Milan and please let us know what you experience
seeing and hearing this Tristan production life in comparison to what
you saw on your computer screen!