A Day at the Opera with Earl Schub

LA Opera’s “Tristan und Isolde” . . . a Test and a Treat

Richard Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” is a test for any opera company and, not the least, because of its nearly 5 hour’s length, a test for an audience. When it’s done right, it is a treat for both. Such was the case at the February 3rd matinee performance produced by the Los Angeles Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

We are drawn into the drama by the absolutely stunning set design by David Hockney. This internationally acclaimed artist has transformed what is normally a series of gloomy settings to match the dark, death-obsessed relationship between the two title characters into a series of brilliant yet lush vistas which dramatically convey a mutually felt passion, both expressed and implied in Wagner’s overwhelming melodies and sonorities. Though Tristan and his Isolde are doomed from the start, the settings serve to remind us that they truly believe that love will transcend their conflicted lives and bring eternal bliss. The orchestra, under the sensitive and insightful direction of James Conlon was more than up to the challenges of this landmark opera which emancipated dissonance and threw wide the gates of chromaticism. From the opening Prelude to Isolde’s heart-rending “Mild und leise.” which ends the opera, the Los Angeles Opera orchestra again demonstrated why it has come of age. However, while Wagner, perhaps more than any other composer before or since, firmly believed in the equality of all the forces needed to perform an opera, it is the singers, especially the two protagonists, who face the biggest challenge in this, his most complex, work. Isolde, promised to Marke, the elderly king of Cornwall and brought to this loveless marriage by Tristan, a knight who shares with her their secret love, sings almost non-stop for all three acts. Soprano Linda Watson, a Wagner specialist, brought warmth and passion to the role and conveyed both the strength and vulnerability of this conflicted character who finds herself hopelessly in love with the man who had slain her former fiancé in combat and is now bringing her to his king. Veteran heldentenor John Treleaven was a Tristan who made up with sincerity and ardor what he may have lacked in sheer vocal power. He was utterly convincing as a man of honor who finally betrays his allegiance to Marke and yields to an overwhelming passion for his beloved Isolde, an inescapable desire catalyzed by a magical “love potion” that both drink, ignorant of its potency. In supporting roles, mezzo Lioba Braun, as Isolde’s faithful companion, Brangane, Juha Uusitalo, a baritone of ringing tones, as Kurwenal, Tristan’s loyal friend, and bass Kristinn Sigmundsson, who sang the role of King Marke with vocal and dramatic elegance and authority, were more than adequate to their tasks.

Richard Wagner was so overcome with his need to compose this epic saga of love locked in mortal combat with duty and honor that he stopped work on what was destined to become his historic and monumental “Ring Cycle” and turned his creative powers on this legendary tale of the doomed love between a beautiful Irish princess and a heroic knight from Cornwall. Exiled from his native country for revolutionary writings in support of a unified Germany, he was to spend ten years living primarily in a villa in Switzerland supplied to him by Otto Weisendonk, a wealthy silk merchant and his young wife, Mathilde, who was to become Wagner’s inspiration (and, undoubtedly, something more.. Never one to either stand on ceremony or be grateful for favors done by others, he dedicated five romantic songs to her and, when he became immersed in reading the medieval tale of the two doomed lovers, in the throes of a passion himself for his admiring hostess, he put down his completed dramatic poem, “Siegfried’s Death” (which was to become the penultimate opera in the four opera “Der Ring des Niebelungen”) and set to work on “Tristan und Isolde.” In the spring of 1857, he read his new creation to an informal audience of four gathered in the Weisondonk Swiss manor house: His, by now, long suffering wife, Minna; the worshipful, Mathilde; Hans von Bulow, a noted conductor and pianist and his wife, Cosima. An intriguing group to be sure since Cosima, the illegitimate daughter of Franz Liszt, was shortly to become Wagner’s mistress, the mother of his three children and, ultimately in 1870, his wife following Minna’s death.

With the successes of “Der fliegende Hollander”, “Tannhauser” and “Lohengin” behind him and his reputation as Germany’s leading opera composer, he made a triumphal return to a unified nation and basked in the glow of the glittering success of “Tristan und Isolde” on June 10, 1865 in Munich. From its premiere to this day it, along with Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, are considered to be the two most significant musical compositions of the 19th century. Whether he knew it or not, Wagner changed the nature of Western music.

“Tristan und Isolde” is not everyone’s cup of tea. But for those intrepid opera goers who can deal with its length and willingly succumb to music that is overwhelming in its beauty, it is as heady as potion as that imbibed by the timeless lovers.