Germany Bayreuth Competition 2024 [3] – Wagner, Tristan und Isolde: Soloists, Bayreuth Competition 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 favor), Tristan und Isolde resists conceptualisation, even a lot in the best way of framing. Maybe not uniquely, however to a larger extent than every other. Any try to make Tristan ‘about’ something aside from what it’s intrinsically about appears doomed to fail. I proceed to dwell in dread of the director who decides it’s by some means ‘about’ immigration, Covid, or something pertaining to the exceptional world. So many, distrusting or just bored with music, appear incapable of sensing what it is involved with.
Put frankly, if you’re bored with music, it’s best to go away Tristan effectively 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 every other artwork kind or technique of expression. It’s the music drama through which least can be misplaced if phrases and staging have been discarded. In actuality, of no matter form, that how we hearken to it, even when satisfied in any other case. At a sure level within the Act II love duet, it turns into troublesome, even inconceivable, to have the phrases, fascinating, advanced, and telling although they might be, register in a single’s consciousness. Whether or not we name this the world of the noumenon, of night time, of Dionysus, or of Tristan, we in addition to the lovers are – or ought to be – there and never in its phenomenal, diurnal, Apollonian, operatic equal.
All very effectively, you might 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 creative 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’t, 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 the rest. A sign function of Bayreuth’s new Tristan, which I noticed in its second efficiency, is that Thorliefur Örn Arnarsson appears to know this, in concept and in observe, and furthermore to know that this doesn’t negate however slightly invitations his work as director. There are instances, I feel, through which he would possibly go additional on this course 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 a fantastic reduction.
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 (evaluate right here) and Peter Konwitschny in Munich, have provided severe 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’s 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 fanatics will discover themselves effectively catered for. Not solely the primary act however your entire 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 largely do the trick within the first act, whose abiding visible motif is Isolde’s billowing wedding ceremony gown, 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 truly to visualise the love potion, understanding that it’s merely an emblem, not a trigger. I’ve no particularly sturdy emotions both means on that in precept; it’s merely an exterior manifestation. It felt barely odd, although – I realise this may occasionally 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 end 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 type 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 which 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 likely 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, varieties a charming backdrop for the stage and finally the ‘actual’ motion. Cleared of that baggage, moved to a unique 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 slightly its lack, all through appears supposed each to intensify but in addition to develop the distinction between night time and day. It reminds us that these aren’t operatic characters; the purpose isn’t essentially to look at them minutely. There are larger forces – finally, one nice, overwhelming drive – at work.
Following the crude lack of course, steadiness, and tuning dropped at us two nights earlier by Oksana Lyniv within the lined pit, Bychkov’s work seemed like aural manna from heaven. He knew tips on how to work with the theatre and its explicit traits; past that, he knew the workings and expressive prospects 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 top of the act – sounded extra fantastically hushed than I can recall, but in no sense narcissistically; this was expectant, apparently imbued with data, albeit data 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, through which intensification of string vibrato may play as vital a task as overwhelming orchestral climax. Bychkov didn’t maintain again; his isn’t Wagner that defers to the voice, nor to something aside 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 folks I’ve spoken to since and marvel how a lot of that is perhaps ascribed to seating within the theatre (as effectively, 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 a lot of this Heldentenor’s acquainted qualities, additionally skilled difficulties. Steadiness within the second-act duet was generally awry with Camilla Nylund’s Isolde, who at occasions additionally appeared stretched, if extra accountable for her half. A level of abandon is, in fact, no unhealthy factor; Schager’s efficiency, nonetheless, got here into and went out of focus just a little 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 harder to keep up his line in any respect.
Christa Mayer’s Brangäne was, against this, every little thing 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 anticipate; this emerged as one thing of a work-in-progress. If just a little bluff, even gruff at occasions, Olafur Sigurdarson had what it took for Kurwenal. The smaller roles have been all effectively 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 infrequently transferring entire.
Mark Berry
