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Dying for some big
visual ideas
REVIEW: TRISTAN AND ISOLDE
Royal Opera House
NINA Stemme’s magnificent Isolde in this new production of Wagner’s opera was in the great Scandinavian tradition of Flagstad and Nilsson.
To a voice of sumptous warmth and emotional power, consummately paced, she brings also a softer tonal beauty than her predecessors. She received a well-deserved standing ovation on the first night.
Veteran Canadian tenor Ben Heppner as Tristan still sounds wonderful at his best, but seemed to tire once or twice towards the end.
Sophie Koch is an eloquent Brangäne; Michael Volle a superb Kurwenal; John Tomlinson’s King Mark creates a hugely touching figure and the smaller roles are all strongly taken.
Christof Loy’s new production, by contrast, was roundly and also deservedly booed at the curtain calls. It showed disrespect to the opera, the singers and the audience.
He divides the stage into two areas, with velvet curtains across the back which draw to reveal a formal room set for a wedding banquet.
The lovers’ psychological drama is played out in the vast empty downstage space, with only a cheap table and two chairs. This might have worked were not the staging so clumsy and devoid of anything illuminating to say. Are today’s opera directors, afraid of big ideas and emotions?
It was full of irritating and distracting details – shoes and clothes pulled pointlessly on and off; constant fidgeting with the chairs; Isolde undressing Brangäne (what was that about?) or sitting on Tristan’s lap – sabotaging the emotional anguish and poetic content of the music and words. One is not asking for old-fashioned boats or castles but for some real insight using modern stage-craft and techniques available today. Certainly he offered no help to Ben Heppner who looks shambolic rather than heroic.
Too much of the action takes place at the extreme edges of the stage so that large swathes of the audience in this horseshoe-shaped theatre could see nothing. Surely someone at the opera house should have realised this during rehearsals. According to various weblogs, ticket holders were called before the performance and offered reductions, and the box office was inundated afterwards with people demanding refunds.
Antonio Pappano’s passionate conducting was wonderfully supportive to the singers, and the Royal Opera Orchestra was magnificent. A wonderful evening musically – hopefully it will be given a more worthy staging next time.
HELEN LAWRENCE
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