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Sunday, August 30, 2015

Tristan und Isolde: Longer Version

Some bullet points:
  • Production emotionally very dark, which can mostly be justified. Yes, trapped in a maze of sorts for Act I worked very well.
  • Act III staging of Tristan's sick-bed hallucinations was ghostly, beautiful, and effective. Excellent use of a scrim, too.
  • Kinda dubious about the Act II torture chamber.
  • Portraying Marke as an evil torturer is contra everything in the libretto and score, though K. Wagner mostly made it work.
  • My traveling companion thought Tristan had died and then been resurrected by the attention of his friends (Kurwenal, the Shepherd, and a third unidentified character), but what I saw was exactly the kind of thing you see in every other production of the opera.
  • Stephen Gould's Tristan mostly beautiful sung, with some odd stabbing at the notes in Act I.
  • See previous long post about Herlitzius's Isolde.
  • Georg Zeppenfeld!! That was a gorgeously sung Marke, and what a voice. (He has appeared in SF once, as Sarastro in the production we saw between Hockney and Kuneko.)
  • Christa Mayer an excellent Brangane, well sung and acted.
  • Towering work from Christian Thielemann. Astonishing, yet unmannered and natural, control over every musical element.

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