NEW YORK — Wagner’s groundbreaking metaphysical romance Tristan und Isolde returned to the Metropolitan Opera on March 9 for the first time in 10 years in a bold new production featuring Lise Davidsen, opera’s current “it” girl. While the lion’s share of promotion focused on the soprano and on the Met debut of director Yuval Sharon, the rewards came from the efforts of the strong cast, the superb orchestra, and a sumptuous production that sometimes overwhelmed the drama.
The Met took a gamble on a director whose imagination has never been bound by ordinary limits. Sharon’s awards include a MacArthur “genius” grant, Musical America’s Director of the Year, and MCANA’s Best New Opera Award, and he has the distinction of being the first American to direct an opera at the Bayreuth Festival. As artistic director of Michigan Opera Theater (now Detroit Opera), his first production was a Covid-era adaptation of Götterdämmerung staged in a parking garage (Brünnhilde drove a Mustang). The Met Tristan set within the confines of a proscenium theater is downright conventional in comparison.
More than a story of thwarted love, Tristan is an opera of ideas, and Sharon’s vision incorporated more concepts than one evening can handle. The director’s main organizing principle — and there are many concepts incorporated — is the duality of, well, everything: death and rebirth, the ritual of the concrete, acted out at a table downstage, versus the fable that plays out in the tunnel floating above the stage — this was a chance to choose your own set of contradictions. Sharon shared some thoughts here.
Es Devlin’s ingenious, monumental set spanned the full height and width of the proscenium. Functioning as a drop curtain was a flat gray panel painted with an asymmetrical iris diaphragm — like an old-fashioned camera lens with overlapping blades that regulate the opening. This “curtain” rose on a small table downstage where a couple sat facing one another. Throughout the act, the two actors, doubles for Tristan and Isolde, ritually repeated the same actions: turning over an hourglass, preparing a blue drink in a pitcher, and pouring it into goblets, the woman holding a dagger to the man’s throat. Looming above and behind the table was a large round disc; a scrim eventually rose to reveal a large tunnel of varying width and depth. The hard walls of the tunnel provided amplification to the singers to compensate for the acoustical handicap of singing 20 feet above stage level.
Most of the singing took place within the tunnel. From time to time, a portal slid open at the back of the tunnel to reveal a seascape, a sunset, a row of apothecary vials. Projections covering or surrounding the tunnel included intermittent live video of the action on the downstage table, alternating with moving waves. During the second act duet, the tunnel split into two sections, which drifted slowly right and left as the lovers sang, though they rarely touched (this is one of the few productions that actually has the lovers embrace). The movement tempo of the set and of the actors was almost always languorous, with the occasional burst of energy at momentous events like the ship’s arrival in Cornwall or the Melot-Kurwenal sword fight ending Act II.
Clint Ramos dressed the characters in sumptuous medieval-feeling robes in rich colors — green for Isolde, blue for Tristan — but by the third act the lovers ended in white or pale blue, suggesting their imminent death. Lighting by John Torres balanced light and dark and introduced a rainbow of saturated colors, in contrast to the unrelieved murkiness of most Tristan productions; projections by Jason H. Thompson and video by Ruth Hogben gave depth, motion, and visual interest to an essentially static scenario. Sightlines were good even in the top of the house from my balcony seat.
This production is the most eye-catching Tristan I’ve ever seen. With its live and recorded video of the actors, the recurring video wallpaper of water, the striking use of color and light, and the multiple levels of action, there is always something to look at.
And that’s the problem: Too much of a good thing becomes a liability. I found myself ignoring for minutes King Marke’s wrenching monologue because I was trying to decipher the hypnotic live video of a broken dinner plate and purple anemones scattered on the banquet table. At times, I enjoyed watching the crashing waves that covered the screen surrounding the tunnel, but when the screen went blank I was grateful for a break from all the visual stimulation. Did the creative team fear a visual vacuum? Wagner would never have tolerated anything that robbed attention from his music.
The final act further illustrates the pitfalls of Sharon’s more-is-more approach. The downstage table is now a clinic setting, and the action grows muddled as the singing Tristan and Isolde repeatedly switch places with their doubles, leaving the stage to reappear in the tunnel overhead. On the table where Tristan lies in agony, the Shepherd rearranges surgical instruments; sometimes the singing Isolde cuddles the Tristan double, while Tristan sings from the tunnel overhead. In the tunnel, the singing Tristan and Isolde are surrounded by white-clad dancers (choreography byAnnie-B Parson) performing militaristic processions or yoga poses or just lolling around against the curved tunnel walls.
As the Tristan and Isolde doubles expire on the downstage table, the dancers in the tunnel gradually remove Isolde’s green robes to reveal a simple white shift she wears for the Liebestod. A final egregious directorial addition downstage was so mawkish and infuriating that it doesn’t merit description. The production left me scratching my head. (Sharon will stage the new Met production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, with Davidsen as Brünnhilde, starting in the 2027-2028 season.)
So after all that, how was the singing? Most of the crowd had come to hear Isolde sung by Davidsen in her heaviest Wagner role to date. The Norwegian soprano has become a Met favorite since her 2019 house debut in Queen of Spades. New Yorkers have heard her in Beethoven, Verdi, Puccini, Strauss, and Wagner; while German seems to be her forte, she will open the next Met season in Verdi’s Macbeth. Davidsen’s voice is a once-in-many-generations phenomenon: cool, steady, impossibly large. Her gleaming laser-like top is her strongest register, but the bottom of her range also projects (except for a couple of instances of the orchestra overplaying).
In this production, she is a larger-than-life presence, taller than everyone in the cast (except for Marke, but she never stands next to or directly interacts with him). She allows herself to be managed by Brangäne, but in the first act she bullies Kurwenal and later Tristan, until the fatal Liebestrank, when passion catapults her into new emotional territory. Her vocal acting was most detailed in the first act, but after the opening of the second act she mostly just sang, and it was glorious. The creamy perfection of her Liebestod, sung softly, didn’t need visible emoting to make its mark.
Unjustly relegated to also-ran billing, Michael Spyres made a powerful role debut as Tristan. The self-styled baritenor may be the only singer in history to undertake both Nemorino and Tristan in a single season. Spyres models his vocalism on the disciplines of previous generations, choosing his roles to emulate the repertoire of an evolving cast of historic singers as his voice matures. His voice is not as large as Davidsen’s (whose is?), but his bel canto clarity and focus enabled him to project to the highest reaches of the house. Much of the part favors his baritonal register, but he also rose to the tenorial demands of the role with only a couple of rough high passages. He had admirable endurance in the punishing last act, vividly imbuing the dying Tristan with anguish and an unwavering faith that Isolde would return. He also had the best diction of the night.
Ryan Speedo Green’s first-ever King Marke was sonorous and imbued with dignity and sorrow. His first entrance was puzzlingly low-key: Instead of bursting in on the lovers warbling overhead, in a suggestion of coitus interruptus, he quietly appears at the banquet table and sits with his back to the audience. I look forward to seeing and hearing him in a more coherent production, or perhaps from downstairs.
Ekaterina Gubanova returned as Brangäne, which she had sung in the Met’s 2016 Trelinski production. Her voice has developed audible wear over the years, and the staging often required her to sing behind a scrim. But she plays a good companion to her Isolde, her mezzo-soprano sounding girlish next to Davidsen’s more womanly sound.
Tomasz Konieczny sounded harsh and blustery in the first act, but by the third act he had mellowed dramatically and vocally into a moving Kurwenal. Ben Reisinger as the Sailor, singing from the balcony, was both fresh and stentorian. Thomas Glass’ Melot had fine vocal and theatrical presence, though with more vibrato than expected in a young baritone. In his Met debut, Steersman Ben Brady sang sweetly, with a hint of a heldentenor future.
Music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin luxuriated in spacious tempos, allowing the music’s energy to surge and subside. He highlighted smaller wind and brass solos to function as mini leitmotifs. At times, the mighty Met Orchestra did overpower the singers, a tendency often noted with this conductor. But for the most part vocal-instrumental balances were unproblematic. English horn soloist Pedro R. Díaz played beautifully, costumed in white while sharing the tunnel-stage with Tristan in the third act.
Problematic as the production is, this Tristan is one for the ages — see it if you can, or at least listen to the March 21 matinee performance, which also will be shown live in HD in movie theaters.
Tristan und Isolde runs through April 4. Most performances are sold out, but tickets for the added April 4 performance, with Stuart Skelton as Tristan and Stephen Milling as Marke, are on sale here.
