Metropolitan Opera - Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, November 28, 2008.

Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center - Dress Circle, Seat E113 ($96.50).

Story. Tristan kills Irish Princess Isolde's finance Morold. He is wounded and Isolde heals him with her magic powers. Tristan later returns to Ireland to take Isolde to Cornwall to marry King Marke; however, the two fall in love. When Isolde's maid Brangane substitute a love potion for a poison, the attempted suicide by Tristan and Isolde results in them falling into each other's arms. When the two lovers meet in secret in Cornwall, they are discovered and denounced by the jealous knight Melot. King Marke, who treats Tristan as his own son, is greatly disappointed. After mortally wounded by Melot, Tristan is taken by his friend Kurwenal to Brittany. Marke and Melot come to Brittany; Melot is killed by Kurwenal, who is subsequently killed by the king's soldiers. Marke actually comes to pardon the lovers, but Tristan ends up dying in Isolde's arms, and Isolde dies upon his body. The story concludes with the lovers appearing together in the world beyond.

Conductor - Daniel Barenboim; Isolde - Katarina Dalayman, Brangane - Michelle DeYoung, Tristan - Peter Seiffert, King Marke - Rene Pape.

This is a long opera. The entire production is five hours long, with 2 intermissions of about 1/2 hour each. The role of Tristan is extremely difficult - high notes and a great deal of singing. An analogy would be a pitcher pitching all 18 innings of a double header. I do not know how great a singer Sieffert is, but his voice certainly tailed off at the end. And he had to sing this very long soliloquy in Act III. My reaction was somewhere between admiration and pity.

The Isolde part must be difficult also. But as the Program Notes say, it is a less demanding one. Brangane has to do quite a bit of singing also, and DeYoung did it well. Pape did an excellent job singing the role of King Marke. His voice was so strong that it was a bit out of balance in my view. Nonetheless, he deserved the applause the audience gave him at curtain call.

The story should be simple enough, but I find both the Program synopsis and the English subtitles a bit confusing. Maazel said somewhere that Wagner was a great composer but only a so-so librettist. Similar sentiments by the Program Annotator here.

To me the music has several interesting characteristics. First, we really thought we must know a couple of tunes from this opera, but turns out it sounded all new to us. Second, the tunes are very atonal; I couldn't tell whether some of the a capella singing was in tune, but I would swear it sounded off when the orchestra came in. Third, the English horn played a beautiful tune during Act III; we kept looking, but couldn't find it. Towards Act I there was this brass group in one of the top tier boxes, with their own conductor. We found Brangane in the orchestra pit. Fourth, as suggested by the Program Notes, to illustrate the sentiments of unrequited love, the chords never quite resolve themselves; this gives a strange quality to the music. Fifth, the melodies (such as they are) are mostly found in the orchestra; the singers tend to sing these high notes that provide harmony. Indeed the music made more "sense" when I tried to listen to the orchestra; but that is an unnatural thing to do since one's attention is usually directed to the stage. I am quite sure I will enjoy the opera more when I listen to it again; but there is very little chance of that.

Speaking of staging, this is one of the most minimal sets I have seen at the Met. And frankly, I don't like it. The same basic slanted platform is used as the deck of a ship, a Cornish castle, and a Brittany castle. There are trap doors where soldiers exit, and in Act III there are these miniature statutes to denote the dreamlike recollections of Tristan.

I had never seen Barenboim in person before today. I had a chance to see him play Beethoven's Emperor's Concerto several years ago, but had to give that up because my brother was visiting. From seeing him play on TV, he seems to be quite immobile (although the music is generally great). He looked very animated and engaged when he was conducting this piece, though. Also, he is surprisingly small when standing next to the principal singers at curtain call.

The New York Times reviewer loved Barenboim. He saw the same performance we did. There is this interesting discussion on the use of prompters by the singers, especially Seiffert who evidently wore an earpiece.