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.