Loading ...Tristan und Isolde at the Royal Opera House, 9/10/09
During great personal and political upheaval Richard Wagner wrote to his friend Franz Liszt in 1854: ‘Never in my life having enjoyed the true happiness of love, I shall erect a memorial to this loveliest of all dreams in which, from the first to the last love shall, for once, find utter repletion.’ Christof Loy’s new production of Tristan und Isolde at the Royal Opera House casts a new shaft of psycho- analytical light on possibly Wagner’s most enduring triumph.
The poverty of action, and often movement, forced the audience’s attention to the fantastic singing. Matti Salminen as King Marke, Michael Volle as Kurwenal and Sophie Koch as Brangäne were captivating and sang with majestic power. Ben Heppner as Tristan, although promised as a treat, was hampered by an apparent ‘allergic reaction’. Whilst disappointing this was no disaster, and throughout the third he did a very good impression of a man longing to die, or at least lie down and stop singing. Whatever force Tristan lacked Nina Stemme as Isolde had in abundance. She carried the love-duets of the second act as Heppner struggled and reached a spine-tingling pinnacle during the ‘liebestod’. Fully deserving of her ovation, she achieved what Wagner sets out in the libretto and sang with the ‘surging breath of the universe’.
The staging, though, was truly divisive. Those expecting a traditional feast for the eyes will be disappointed; the stage split in two, one half mostly concealed and the other decorated with … a single chair. A steel wall acted as a backdrop for the shadows of the singers and thus another stage for the psychological torments of the characters to be acted out upon. Problems arose when Christof Loy placed most of the action against the wall at the far left of the stage, an error which prevented about a third of the audience from being able to see anything of the singers. It was this act of carelessness (or arrogance, perhaps) that precipitated, and maybe justified, the booing heard after the opening night.
Loy’s production is something to marvel at, the perfect marriage of singing that is alive with emotion and staging which interprets Wagner’s ‘memorial to this loveliest of all dreams’ in a radical but truthful way … but only if you are sitting in the right seats.
