Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Isolde)

“A performance realised to Glyndebourne's highest standards - the chorus and stage brass are Bayreuth-level, the casting immaculate (they can all really sing these parts) and Belohlávek's conducting balanced with a Goodall-like attention to the filigree detail of Wagner's new-wave scoring” Gramophone Magazine, August 2008

“Stemme's fiery Irish princess is even finer than on the Domingo CD… Gambill's burly Tristan projects a darker, more resigned intensity… Pape's black-voiced Marke rightly dominates the stage… Karneus is a passionate, lusciously sung Brangäne. Lehnhoff's Glyndebourne production doesn't outclass Daniel Barenboim's magnificent video... But those looking for a Tristan with warmth and immediacy will find it certainly shares Barenboim's benchmark recommendation.” BBC Music Magazine, March 2008 *****

“I don’t think that I have ever witnessed a more perfect realisation of a Wagner opera than this superb Tristan und Isolde. …[Jirí Belohlávek] is scrupulous with the score, and takes his time over it: the pauses and silences are immense and there is no factitious attempt to whip up excitement by speeding. …a great and unforgettable occasion” The Telegraph

“a performance realised to Glyndebourne's highest standards – the chorus and stage brass are Bayreuthlevel, the casting immaculate (they can all really sing these parts), and Belohlávek's conducting balanced with a Goodall-like attention to the filigree detail of Wagner's new-wave scoring. Old-style analyses of the music used to talk about the 'glance' motif. Lehnhoff's staging deploys a series of heartbreaking glances: Stemme's Isolde when Karnéus's Brangäne tells her she's taken the love draught, Stemme again when Tristan arrives in Act 2, Pape's Marke as he sees the lovers together and, at BrokebackMountain-level, Skovhus's Kurwenal as he cradles Gambill's Tristan then breaks away, half in fear of his lord's death, half in fear of his feelings for him. In fact, has a Tristan ever been so deeply loved by his lady and squire as here, or felt so wretched at betraying his king? And is Skovhus actually the greatest Kurwenal yet recorded? Roland Aeschlimann provides a geometrically attractive whorl of a standing set, concentric wooden circles telescoping towards a constantly varied horizon: a ship, a spaceship, everywhere, nowhere – perfect. The lighting (Robin Carter and Aeschlimann) has a genuine physical presence and seems to reinvent the colour blue. At the point of Isolde's almost belated arrival in Act 3, a surreal, Ingmar Bergman-like atmosphere permeates events: she arrives from behind on high as a figure of death and wraps him in a black cloak, while Skovhus's poignant Kurwenal gets a non-realistic, Brechtian centre-stage for his fights and death” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“Daniel Barenboim's earliest performances of Tristan at Bayreuth are documented in a DVD of the 1981 production by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (filmed in 1983) with René Kollo and Johanna Meier in the title-roles (available from DG). In 1993, when he was vastly more experienced and assured in his handling of this formidable score, Barenboim returned to the work in conjunction with playwright and theatre director Heiner Müller. This recording was made two years later, over seven days during the festival's rehearsal period. One imagines that the acts were filmed (without audiences) on separate days, to great advantage where the singers' stamina is concerned: but one particularly evident edit, at the point of Isolde's long-awaited entrance in Act 3, indicates that this is in some respects a hybrid product, halfway between a live performance and a studio version of a particular staging.
This is a fine and intensely moving account of a supreme masterpiece of musical theatre. It is not perfect, with the setting for Act 2 particularly unappealing, but it is serious in its dramatic, theatrical intent, and (that Act 2 setting apart) accomplished in its realisation. Müller's conception of the work is austere, not expecting setting or acting to get in the way of things which are best left to the music, and on the whole he has managed a difficult assignment with flair and conviction. Nowhere is this clearer than at the end, where Waltraud Meier sings the Liebestod from the front of the stage, with no semaphoring gestures and only facial expression and beautifully graded vocal projection to convey the essence of the drama.
Singers with more opulent voices have undertaken the role, yet Meier's contained, richly nuanced approach to both acting and singing is ideally suited to this production. Her Tristan, Siegfried Jerusalem, is no less impressive, with a poised demeanour avoiding the woodenness that afflicts so many Wagner tenors. Add a marvellously sonorous Marke in Matthias Hölle, no weaknesses in the other roles, and the virtues stack up to something special.
Does Barenboim's very explicit musical moulding actually fit with such a restrained stage production? Or is the whole point in the contrast between the visible and the audible? Such basic questions make one think yet again about the nature and significance of Wagner's most provocative and inexhaustible work for the stage.
Something special, indeed.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010

“This is a fine an intensely moving account of a supreme masterpiece of musical theatre. Müller's conception of the work is austere… and on the whole he has managed a difficult assignment with flair and conviction. …Meier's contained, richly nuanced approach to both acting and singing is ideally suited to this production. Her Tristan Siegfried Jerusalem, is not less impressive, with a poised demeanour avoiding the woodenness that afflicts so many Wagner tenors. Add a marvellously sonorous Marke in Matthias Hölle, no weaknesses in the other roles, and in the virtues stack up to something special.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2008

“As for the long awaited debuts of Meier and Jerusalem, the audience was ecstatic, so much so that Jerusalem excitedly hugged and kissed his partner several times during the curtain calls” Herald Tribune

“...a splendid partnership of Siegfried Jerusalem at his finest and the rich-voiced Waltraud Meier, also at her freshest...Barenboim is in his element” Penguin Guide, 2010 ****

“With Johanna Meier’s unusually powerful Isolde and René Kollo’s resplendent, expressive Tristan, a better cast is hardly imaginable today” Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung

“For a supposedly 'difficult' opera, there's a fair choice of DVD Tristans… But this 1983 Bayreuth version, reappearing at last here on DVD, remains the finest. Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's staging steers impressively between the Romantically naturalistic and the poetic: a gnarled tree trunk doubles as ship and castle, and Isolde is symbolically isolated by her encircling robes. René Kollo and Johanna Meier don't have huge voices, but sing and act with unusual expression, and even look good. Matti Salminen as King Mark and Hanna Schwarz as Brangäne are heartbreakingly intense...” BBC Music Magazine, December 2007 *****

“This Bayreuth Tristan (first seen in 1981) is an almost perfect marriage of fairy-tale beauty (legendary Arthurian settings, "period" costumes) and interventionist Regie. Meier, of all princess, spell-casting witch and consumed lover, is a risk-taking Isolde, slamming the sword with the missing fragment into the wide swaying ship deck. Kollo's hero has Hotter-like detail, intensity and pain. ...the younger Daniel Barenboim secures thrilling drama-enhancing playing from the Festival Orchestra. But the ultimate triumph is Ponnelle's - he staged the show, designed the set and the costumes, and directed this film of it.” Gramophone Magazine, November 2007

“Barenboim's DVD, with evocatively beautiful sets by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, presents an essentially poetic vision of Tristan...The video production is very well managed, using six cameras imaginatively, often in close-up, bringing out the beauty of the sets. Meier rises superbly to the challenge of the final Liebestod, rounding off an impressive performance” Penguin Guide

“both [Heppner and Eaglen] are vocally at their peak, singing like angels, totally unstrained and finely focused. The young René Pape as King Mark is formidably impressive too, with Katarina Dalayman a superb Brangäne...Levine brings out the power and concentration of this epic, drawing brilliant playing from the Met. Orchestra” Penguin Guide, 2010 ***

“As in all great stagings - and I have no doubt that this is one - a list of unforgettable links between text, music and action soon accumulates. It's hard to know where to point the awards finger first in such a complete ensemble performance...Despite the ferocious competition, absolutely unmissable.” Gramophone Magazine, May 2010

"A bold gamble and an exemplary success.... An interpretation that is intelligent, superlatively musical and unfailingly sensitive." Le Monde