Germany Bayreuth Pageant 2024 [3] – Wagner, Tristan und Isolde: Soloists, Bayreuth Pageant Refrain and Orchestra / Semyon Bychkov (conductor). Festspielhaus, Bayreuth, 3.8.2024. (MB)
Manufacturing:
Director – Thorliefur Örn Arnarsson
Set design – Vytautas Narbutas
Costumes – Sibylle Wallum
Dramaturgy – Andri Hardmeier
Lighting – Sascha Zauner
Refrain director – Eberhard Friedrich
Solid:
Tristan – Andreas Schager
King Marke – Günther Groissböck
Isolde – Camilla Nylund
Kurwenal – Olafur Sigurdarson
Melot – Birger Radde
Brangäne – Christa Mayer
Shepherd – Daniel Jenz
Steersman – Lawson Anderson
Younger Sailor – Matthew Newlin
Virtually uniquely amongst operas (dramas, if we want), Tristan und Isolde resists conceptualisation, even a lot in the best way of framing. Maybe not uniquely, however to a larger extent than another. Any try to make Tristan ‘about’ something apart from what it’s intrinsically about appears doomed to fail. I proceed to dwell in dread of the director who decides it’s in some way ‘about’ immigration, Covid, or something pertaining to the outstanding world. So many, distrusting or just tired of music, appear incapable of sensing what it is involved with.
Put frankly, in case you are tired of music, it’s best to go away Tristan nicely alone. Its motion is inside; the outside is basically again story. For Wagner at his most Schopenhauerian, in aesthetics as a lot as ontology, the striving of the Will is the motion, to which music – not against, however as drama – as its illustration comes nearer than another artwork kind or technique of expression. It’s the music drama wherein least could be misplaced if phrases and staging had been discarded. In actuality, of no matter variety, that how we take heed to it, even when satisfied in any other case. At a sure level within the Act II love duet, it turns into tough, even unattainable, to have the phrases, fascinating, advanced, and telling although they could be, register in a single’s consciousness. Whether or not we name this the world of the noumenon, of evening, of Dionysus, or of Tristan, we in addition to the lovers are – or must be – there and never in its phenomenal, diurnal, Apollonian, operatic equal.
All very nicely, it’s possible you’ll say, however we do have phrases, we do have singers, we do have staging. Certainly we do, they usually – singers and staging, in a way phrases too – should work inside these realities, these inventive truths. That needn’t be an issue; artwork thrives upon constraint of 1 type or one other. (Ask Wagner’s antipode, Stravinsky.) Too typically, although, administrators don’t, maybe can not, since they appear to have little sense of what this work is definitely involved with, nonetheless much less that it seemingly can’t be wrenched to be involved with anything. A sign characteristic of Bayreuth’s new Tristan, which I noticed in its second efficiency, is that Thorliefur Örn Arnarsson appears to understand this, in concept and in apply, and furthermore to understand that this doesn’t negate however somewhat invitations his work as director. There are instances, I believe, wherein he would possibly go additional on this path in paring down the extraneous – is there a greater mannequin than Wieland Wagner right here? – however this makes for an excellent begin and, following so many misfires, whether or not in Bayreuth or elsewhere, comes as an important aid.
Nietzsche wrote a great deal of arrant nonsense about Wagner, typically intentionally so, but in calling Tristan the opus metaphysicum, he was on the mark. Solely a few stagings I’ve seen, by Dmitri Tcherniakov (evaluation right here) and Peter Konwitschny in Munich, have provided critical problem to that and Konwitschny in significantly extra circumscribed trend; they’re destined, I think, to stay exceptions. Anarsson’s manufacturing treads on safer floor, neither with out cause nor with out benefit Furthermore, there may be to Anarsson’s work and to that of his collaborators, not least the excellent Semyon Bychkov as conductor, a way not solely of the noumenal however of the aesthetic.
Ship lovers will discover themselves nicely catered for. Not solely the primary act however your complete drama has a ship as its setting. Vytautas Narbutas’s set designs evoke this powerfully, suggestively, and with out muddle — save, within the second act, the place the muddle is the purpose. Ropes principally do the trick within the first act, whose abiding visible motif is Isolde’s billowing wedding ceremony costume, additionally suggestive of sails. The phrases displayed – and simply as a lot, hid – on it from Wagner’s poem inform their very own story, particularly as she makes an attempt, with various success and maybe intent, to free herself from it. Anarsson sees no cause really to visualise the love potion, figuring out that it’s merely an emblem, not a trigger. I’ve no particularly robust emotions both means on that in precept; it’s merely an exterior manifestation. It felt barely odd, although – I realise this will likely appear considerably at odds with what I say above – as did the onset of what appeared like a sensible combat between Tristan and Melot on the finish of the second act, Melot wielding a sword, just for its final result to occur seemingly spontaneously. These objects and acts of the day maybe profit, if much less strongly than their counterparts within the Ring, from some kind of visualisation.
The second act strikes to the within of the ship, seemingly its core: the core, one would possibly say, of what motion there could also be. Its décor is fascinating, suggesting a lumber room strewn with objects that will in some sense have led us – which is to say Wagner, the work, these performing and in any other case experiencing it – there. Caspar David Friedrich’s presence is probably inevitable, and can at the very least evoke recognition, although a part of me feels it’s time to give his extra celebrated photos, like these of Monet and Klimt some time in the past, a interval of relaxation. The broader, unaggressive deconstruction of ‘civilisation’, western and maybe jap too, types a fascinating backdrop for the stage and finally the ‘actual’ motion. Cleared of that baggage, moved to a special a part of (presumably) the identical ship, the third act unfolds in a ‘later’, barer atmosphere. It already feels too late, which in the obvious if not essentially the deepest sense, it’s. Lighting, or somewhat its lack, all through appears meant each to intensify but in addition to develop the distinction between evening and day. It reminds us that these should not operatic characters; the purpose shouldn’t be essentially to watch them minutely. There are larger forces – finally, one nice, overwhelming pressure – at work.
Following the crude lack of path, steadiness, and tuning dropped at us two nights earlier by Oksana Lyniv within the lined pit, Bychkov’s work appeared like aural manna from heaven. He knew how you can work with the theatre and its explicit traits; past that, he knew the workings and expressive potentialities of Wagner’s rating and communicated them in a studying that always took its time, particularly within the second act, but by no means dragged. The opening of the first-act Prelude – and its echo, in direction of the tip of the act – sounded extra superbly hushed than I can recall, but in no sense narcissistically; this was expectant, apparently imbued with information, albeit information that would not but be imparted, of the place the music would head, of what dramatically, within the fullest sense of the world, was at stake in melody, dissonance, and their penalties, at all times, if generally solely simply, inside a tonal framework. That was the story, wherein intensification of string vibrato may play as vital a task as overwhelming orchestral climax. Bychkov didn’t maintain again; his shouldn’t be Wagner that defers to the voice, nor to something apart from its personal musicodramatic necessities. He nonetheless helped liberate the voice’s expressive potential, even when vocal realities fell in need of the best.
I didn’t really feel that so strongly as a few individuals I’ve spoken to since and marvel how a lot of that is perhaps ascribed to seating within the theatre (as nicely, maybe, as to aesthetic priorities). Seated behind the stalls, I could have benefited from the therapeutic balm of the Bayreuth acoustic. That stated, Andreas Schager’s Tristan, for stretches of the efficiency possessed of lots of this Heldentenor’s acquainted qualities, additionally skilled difficulties. Stability within the second-act duet was generally awry with Camilla Nylund’s Isolde, who at occasions additionally appeared stretched, if extra in charge of her half. A level of abandon is, after all, no unhealthy factor; Schager’s efficiency, nonetheless, got here into and went out of focus a little bit too typically and have become surprisingly disjunct within the third act, as if the trouble to sing extra softly, to supply a extra variegated studying, made it tougher to take care of his line in any respect.
Christa Mayer’s Brangäne was, against this, all the pieces it ought to have been: heat, sustained, clever, and in addition to built-in as any orchestral line. Günther Groissböck’s snarling Marke appeared to be making a play to come back throughout as extra merciless, even vindictive, than one would possibly count on; this emerged as one thing of a work-in-progress. If a little bit bluff, even gruff at occasions, Olafur Sigurdarson had what it took for Kurwenal. The smaller roles had been all nicely taken, Birger Radde’s ambivalent Melot, Daniel Lenz’s sweetly sung Shepherd, and Matthew Newlin’s clear-toned Sailor all standing out, while taking their place within the larger ensemble. The latter was finally what mattered and which, shortcomings apart, made this a satisfying and sometimes transferring complete.
Mark Berry
