United States Wagner, Tristan und Isolde: Soloists, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra / Gustavo Dudamel (conductor). Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles, 15-17.12.2022. (LV)
Production:
Director – Peter Sellars
Visual artist – Bill Viola
Executive producer, video – Kira Perov
Video operator – Alex MacInnis
Lighting – Benjamin Zamora
Artistic director, Los Angeles Master Chorale – Grant Gershon
Cast:
Tristan – Michael Weinius
Isolde – Miina-Liisa Värelä
Kurwenal – Ryan Speedo Green
Brangäne – Okka von der Damerau
King Marke – Eric Owens
Melot – Robert Stahley
Shepherd – Arnold Livingston Geis
Steersman – Ryan Wolfe
After attending Gustavo Dudamel’s first Tristan und Isolde, staged in a single act per evening as a part of the Tristan Project, one can solely think about the affect of seeing all three acts on one evening when he returns to the Paris Opera in January to steer seven performances of this manufacturing. In Los Angeles – with a solid of sensible appearing singers, the Tristan legend of unattainable love and the wonderful music – it was a showcase for the sorts of intense operatic experiences that may be achieved with built-in multi-sensual productions constructed over established favorites.
Based on the viewers’s response every evening, the Tristan Project is as near a World Cup ultimate because the operatic world is more likely to get. From the losers’ viewpoint, in fact. And whereas Bill Viola’s immersive imaginative and prescient from 2004 might really feel dated by the emergence over twenty years of latest expertise feeding the video tradition, its uncooked fantasy was an elemental, detailed response to the legend in synch with Wagner’s music.
The hugeness of the video equipment rendered the singers considerably nameless and made it the star of the present though the music retained its primacy, particularly with the Los Angeles Philharmonic within the heart of issues on stage. The strings had been dazzling, the cellos notably so with their razor-sharp passionate virtuosity, the winds sang brilliantly in beautiful timbres and the brass had been relentlessly golden and virtuosic. When the orchestra wanted to surge collectively, they did so in sweeping phrases of huge dynamic vary. Dudamel’s conducting was intense in a meandering type of means, as if he too was typically distracted by Isolde’s nipples and different parts on the large silver display. It might have been a ‘Cirque de Tristan’, however in his palms it was extra delicately wrought, like Peter Brook’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Director Peter Sellars heightened and relieved to some extent the monotony of the opera’s conversational features by having the singers largely sit on an extended black sofa (other than often standing sentry within the wings and balconies). It was clearly helpful for the love scenes however unexpectedly highly effective when the King confronted Tristan, and the hero held his head in his palms with grief and disgrace – and but there they had been, sitting subsequent to one another as if on a park bench. It diminished the horrible majesty of the king-champion relationship to that of a father-son relationship, which made the load of the betrayal extra human and extra crushing.
Laurence Vittes