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Eros and Thanatos (Love and Death) Vienna
Staatsoper
09/17/2023 - & September 20, 24, 2023
Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde
Andreas Schager (Tristan), Anja Kampe (Isolde), Günther Groissböck (König Marke), Iain Paterson (Kurwenal),Tanja Ariane Baumgartner (Brangäne), Martin Hässler (Melot), Jusung Gabriel Park (A Pilot), Hiroshi Amako (A shepherd), Kathleho Mokhoabane (A young sailor)
Chor der Wiener Staatsoper, Martin Schebesta (chorus master), Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper, Philippe Jordan (conductor)
Calixto Bieito (stage director), Rebecca Ringst (sets), Ingo Krügler (costumes), Michael Bauer (lights)
(© Wiener Staatsoper/Michael Pöhn)
Tristan und Isolde is a colossal work, not only for its length (five hours, including two intermissions) or for the effect the famous Tristan chord had on Western music, but also for the symbolism it represents. Wagner was hugely influenced by Schopenhauer’s philosophy when he wrote this masterpiece. He was also leading an illicit love affair with Mathilde Wesendonck, wife of his benefactor, Swiss businessman Otto von Wesendonck.
Calixto Bieito’s stagings were revolutionary when they first appeared on Europe’s major stages a quarter century ago. Their linear contours and geometric shapes complemented original visions of the operatic literature. For this most challenging of operas, Bieito’s ideas sadly fall short.
Tristan’s plot is simple: an Irish Princess takes pity on Tantris, the knight who killed her bethrothed Morold. She tends to him and brings him back to life though she knew he was her fiancé’s killer. Tantris turns out to be Tristan, nephew of England’s King Marke, and he returns to Ireland to claim Isolde as bride for his uncle. On the ship taking them to Cornwall, an outraged Isolde asks her lady in waiting Brangäne to give her and Tristan poison as she cannot accept the humiliation. Brangäne takes pity and gives them a love potion. The two fall madly in love. In the second act, the two are caught in flagrante by King Marke during a passionate tryst. Tristan is seriously wounded by his friend Melot who had denounced him to the King. In the final act, Tristan lays dying in his castle in his native Brittany awaiting either death or Isolde. Isolde arrives as Tristan is dying and collapses next to him.
One can view this doomed love story linearly or try to see some validation despite the desperate love story. Bieito chooses the former, concentrating on the impossibility of the fusing of two beings except through death, a depressing prospect to endure during five hours. Though there is no direct mimicking of Patrice Chéreau’s Intimacy, the emblematic film on infidelity and the human inability to fuse with another being, its spirit is present in Bieito’s vision of Tristan und Isolde.
True, infidelity is central to Tristan und Isolde. Isolde is unfaithful to her betrothed Morold by loving his killer; Brangäne is unfaithful to Isolde by substituting poison with a love philtre; Melot betrays his best friend by leading King Marke to Tristan and Isolde’s amorous assignation; and Isolde is unfaithful to her husband. But love supercedes treachery and the glory of love is the predominant theme of the opera. Bieito opts for a miserabilist view of amorous relationships.
The two protagonists are shown as isolated throughout the opera by the frequent use of separate cages in which each is imprisoned. Yes, mundane life is everyone’s prison: no great revelation there.
At the end of Act I, in lieu of bringing poison in an ancient box, Brangäne moves between the two doomed protagonists carrying two transparent plastic bags, each containing a fish. The separateness of the fish relates to one’s being ever alone, even when one feels the bliss of love. This gloomy vision is valid though heavy‑handed.
As in several other productions, it alludes to the absence of a love philtre and to the spontaneous and innate nature of Tristan and Isolde’s passion. Mercifully, we are in Vienna, where the erudite audience is neither daunted by the outrageous staging, the demanding music or the length of the opera. For mere mortals i.e. foreign tourists, and I chatted with a few during the two intermissions, this was too much symbolism.
Act II opens to Brangäne wearing a bloodied kitchen apron disembowelling the two fish. This may refer to the two lover’s ensuing destiny. Bieito chooses to have the most unusual Act II love duet, in which Tristan and Isolde are in separate rooms, Isolde in a dining room or a kitchen (symbol of marital domesticity) and Tristan, in a living room.
As the duet increases in intensity, each lover throws out and destroys objects from their mundane lives. Isolde breaks cups and dishes, Tristan tears out pages from books and throws out ashtrays and lamps. Bieito presents Tristan as a rive gauche intellectual, shabby, gruff and unshaven in contrast to a neat and elegant King Marke. As the duet heats up, each lover starts to tear up the wallpaper from the walls of their respective rooms. By the end of the duet, both exit their rooms and finally touch, while their empty rooms are dangling, tilted with the contents in disarray, an obvious symbol for having destroyed their lives.
At the end of the act, King Marke appears with two children, an extremely rapid or a figurative outcome of his union with Isolde. Tristan is not stabbed by Melot, but rather cuts his own veins with the kitchen knife Brangäne used earlier to disembowel the fish. One child grabs the knife from Isolde as she too attempts suicide.
As depressing and detached this vision is, it is provocative and offered a deconstructed view of the love duet. However, it is hard to see how the chiaroscuro aspects of the opera escaped the stage director. The libretto, especially in that duet, makes incessant references to light and dark, day and night, i.e. love and death. A gradual increase in the intensity of the lighting as the duet progressed was the main observation of that important aspect of the text. Add to that the vulgar lighting of a table lamp Tristan is on the verge of discarding, as he utters the words “das Licht” (the light). If I didn’t know better, I would have thought it a puerile joke on the Wagner‑loving public.
Act III was the least felicitous of the three, even by Bieito’s low standards. It opened with a score of naked men and women with full frontal exposure. As the sad music progresses, they pair up, with most in same sex couplings. They then disengage, and we are subjected to their posteriors during Tristan’s lamentations. They represent the futile attempts at two beings fused through love. At the end of the opera, King Marke appears with “the children.” The kitchen table is upended, as previously seen in the Act II duet between Isolde and the dying Tristan, a sign of Marke’s blessing of the lovers’ union in death.
This is probably the most hideous production of Tristan und Isolde that I have ever seen, yet it is also one of the best I have ever heard. The entire cast was first‑rate and managed to be moving despite copious onstage distractions. The absolute star of the show was Andreas Schager, endowed with the ideal voice for Tristan; manly without sounding baritonal, capable of overcoming the murderous part without showing signs of fatigue, and endlessly expressive in his acting and singing.
Anja Kampe is a close second. Her Isolde was regal despite the domestic setting, and it was no small feat to supersede the squalor of the surroundings. Her dramatic soprano is capable of enduring this long role. Act I, Isolde’s act, is so unimaginably demanding, that finishing with her voice intact for the next act duet was an achievement in itself. She exuded a moving, earthy femininity in that duet, despite the attendant chaos. Her Act III Liebestod was sung with beautiful legato and interpreted with subtlety. She managed to artfully lighten her huge instrument to suit this sublime final aria.
Tanja Ariane Baumgartner was a warm Brangäne, maternal and caring. Her creamy mezzo contrasted well with Kampe’s dramatic soprano. Her diction was especially clear, rendering her lines even more memorable. Iain Paterson, endowed with a deliciously rich baritone, was a credible Kurwenal. His mocking of Isolde and Brangäne was as biting as his affection for Tristan was moving. In the final act, the stage director chose to make him more moribund than the fatally wounded Tristan. Yet this made little sense and rendered some of the text of Act III absurd. I suppose grief can be more deadly than kitchen cutlery.
Günther Groissböck’s King Marke was suitably regal and poised. His diction was clear and he was attentive to his wording. His powerful interpretation of the Act II lamentation following his discovery of Isolde’s infidelity was heartbreaking. The smaller roles were also well cast.
Despite the hideous and misguided staging, the glorious voices and interpretation aided by the beautiful sound of the Orchester der Wiener Staatsoper made for a superlative performance. Philippe Jordan led a magnificent orchestra that was born to play this score. The playing was mostly flawless throughout the performance, save for the opening of Act II. There was a dissonance in the opening hunting horns that even astounded the musicians whose faces were visible from my seat. It was almost funny as Isolde’s opening lines shortly after are “Nicht Hörnerschall tönt so hold” (“The calling of the horns does not sound so sweet.”).
At most theatres, the public would have manifested their disapproval of such a flawed staging, but the Viennese, though passionate of music, are too well behaved. Wisely, they brushed off such outrageous staging as a mere fly in the ointment.
Ossama el Naggar
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