Wagner Society in NSW Inc
Tristan und Isolde at the Bastille Opera, Paris, Friday 29th April 2005
The new Tristan at Paris was a widely publicised sell-out series of performances starring Ben Heppner and Waltraud Meier, directed by the aging wunderkind Peter Sellars.
Heppner was in magnificent voice, particularly in Act III, where he successfully portrayed the anguished Tristan. Surely the greatest Tristan since Vickers, he conveyed the inner turmoil of the character with great passion. Meier has now developed some very strange throat sounds in the lower register and is clearly in long-term vocal decline, but still managed some beautiful soaring phrases in Act II and the Liebestod. Yvonne Naef was a rather rough Brangane in Act I, but sang an extremely beautiful warning song from a side box in Act II. Jukka Rasilainen was a crude rough-voiced Kurwenal, whilst Franz-Josef Selig sang a perhaps overly affectionate if beautiful King Mark.
The performance was finely conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, with careful attention paid to orchestral details. The off-stage horns at the start of Act II were nicely separated at the sides of the theatre to produce a clear orchestral texture.
The Bastille Opera house, one of the Mitterand "grand projects" for Paris resembles a vast railway station, and although the acoustic is clear, the vast size and box design produces an alienation and separation from the performances not experienced in other large opera houses such as The Met. This disadvantage was exacerbated by the strange use of video film projection as a substitute for staging and action. Movements by the singers were kept to a minimum, whilst a distracting movie was projected on a large screen. Where this was not fatuous, as, for example, at the start, when Brangane sings about waves we see waves, and when Isolde sings about the ship crashing on to the rocks we see waves crashing on to rocks, it attempted to illustrate the story with images such as couples preparing to bathe, lighting candles, green hills and so on, which were either distracting or irrelevant. Perhaps the only point in favour of such staging is its cheapness, so that expense could be concentrated on the major singers. In summary, good but not great.
Lisa Gasteen will be singing Isolde in this production at the Bastille in November/December 2005. The production may also travel to New York in 2007.
Review by Richard Mason
This Page was last updated on:
26-Sep-2005
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