Tristan via Monorail

Sam is on to Wuppertal to see yet another Tristan und Isolde:

WAGNER: TRISTAN UND ISOLDE
WUPPERTAL
24 MAY 2007

Wuppertal has a brand new opera house. Well, almost brand new. The theater building underwent a major overhaul during the past several years at the cost of a gazillion euros and re-opened last autumn. The renovations have produced a brightly lit creme and gold auditorium of about 800 seats, distributed over the progressively widening parquet and two steeply raked balconies. All price ranges have democratized views of the stage.

The acoustical characteristics struck me as typical of newly constructed spaces meant for music: generous reverb and rapid response from top range to bottom. The litmus test, though, is whether the acoustics amplify the singers over a large orchestra. Few works are better suited to providing the tough questions than Tristan und Isolde, which I heard this past Sunday. The house passed the test admirably, at least from my seat in a box at the side of the first balcony: The voices thrust forward over the pit, even when the orchestra was going full-tilt. The ambiance, though, tends to favor male singers.

The acoustical qualities of the house came into sharp relief for me, as I was listening to Marion Amman as Isolde. A couple of weeks ago, I heard her in the same role in Cologne, where she simply sounded better -- bigger, brighter, a more varied timbre in the upper middle register -- aural peculiarities that have nothing to do with how she was singing, which was superbly. Amman is a singer to be reckoned with no matter where she performs.

The acoustical quirks of the house were especially unkind to Anette Bod, whose Brangäne seemed acidic at the bottom and shrewish at the top. Her dark mezzo has size, and she has abundant musicality going for her, but her sound in Wuppertal struck me as hectoring rather than heartening. Maybe elsewhere...

On the other hand, the acoustics seemed to caress John Uelenhopp's unhappy Tristan. His is not the most beautiful voice you're likely to encounter in the role, but it projects boldly under pressure, retains its virility in soft passages and, most importantly on Sunday, did not tire in the fevered throes of Tristan's third act mad scene.

Kay Stieferman as Kurvenal also benefited from the ambiance. His baritone is a powerful engine that also yields rich subtleties, though the lower end of his range has yet to come fully into its own.

As King Marke, Gregory Reinhart delivered a compelling oration in the second act.

The backstage area has undergone a complete update too, but producer Gerd Leo Guck, who is also General Manager, apparently decided to abjure a splashy display of the theater's state-of-the-art technical facilities. Instead, his designer Roland Aeschlimann provided him with literally a blank page -- a series of stark black-white rectangular frames, one behind another. No hint of place, except from subtle lighting changes dominated by shades of blue. For some reason, the characters are dressed mostly in muted Japonaiserie costumes by Andrea Schmidt-Futterer. But in a jarring costume switch, Isolde shows up to bid Tristan farewell dressed in a black haute-DDR evening gown.

I don't get it. Are we meant to be in Cornwall, Kareol, Kanagawa or Karl-Marx-Stadt? But I also admit, that the production is attractive and doesn't get in the way of the music.

Speaking of which, the performance was delayed for nearly 40 minutes because conductor Toshiyuki Kamioki was caught in traffic. It's a miracle that the show got started at all, if he drove as slowly as he led parts of the first and second acts. As noted by one critic, who wrote enthusiastically about the premiere, Kamioki not merely conducted, but celebrated Tristan. That was obvious from the belated start. But if there's a line separating celebration from self-indulgence, Kamioki crossed it by a kilometer. The sluggishness that crept in during those doncha-just-love-it? passages didn't bother me as much as his stop-light running races to get to the next Big Moment. Oddly enough, though, he managed to create remarkable tension in some spots. But Kamioki reveals himself still in the formative stages of an interpretation-in-progress.

Absent a ragged entrance here and there, the orchestra played for him with polished verve.

Again, no program credit for the English horn soloist, who played with reedy passion. Can't the musician's union do something about such omissions?

And now a confession: the really really fun part of visiting Wuppertal for the first time, was discovering the monorail that took me four stops from the main train station to Adlerbrücke, where the opera house is located. The Schwebebahn runs through most of the city, hovering over the (river) Wupper for much of its eight-mile route. It was designed by Eugen Langen, known best for his part in developing the gas engine, and completed in 1901. It's the oldest monorail system in the world and is unique in Germany. It suffered massive damage during the Second World War, but it was hastily rebuilt and has operated almost continuously ever since. If your travel plans take you through the Ruhr area this summer, a stop in Wuppertal is well worth a detour, just to take a ride over the city on its Schwebebahn. The whole trip takes only a half hour and costs less than two dollars per person.

© Sam H. Shirakawa

Aural Viagra (or Tristan Redux)

Sam went back to the Cologne Tristan to see if he could catch lightning in a bottle ... he claims to have captured "aural Viagra" instead:

WAGNER: TRISTAN UND ISOLDE
Cologne
8 May 2009

To discover a dream singer before the Great Unwashed is told what to think: It makes all those ho-hum hours of so-so opera-going worthwhile. There’s little else to compare with the thrill of hearing–-to name only a few--Regine Crespin, Jon Vickers, Marilyn Horne, Kiri te Kanawa, René Pape, Juan Diego Flórez before they became big stars. But to discover within a week not one but two turbojet singers who may be destined to join their ranks... that’s aural Viagra!

Recently I reported on finding mezzo-soprano Elena Zhidkova at the Cologne Opera, belting out what I called a “hair-raising” Brangäne. I could hardly believe it, so I returned a few days later to the succeeding performance of Tristan. She took a few dozen bars to really get with the program this time, but she nonetheless confronted me again with a voice that diddles the nerve-endings and invigorates those arcane longings that only a select few larynges can induce.

At this performance, a second discovery: Samuel Youn as Kurwenal. This South Korean bass-baritone, now in his mid-30s, was reportedly one of the few cast members who drew approval at the production’s much maligned premiere two months ago. (I have no doubt, that some readers may well be muttering: You’re only discovering him now? Catch up, Sam,– this guy’s already appeared at Bayreuth in Christoph Schlingensief’s production of Parsifal!. To which, I with abject contrition can only reply: Silly me, who could possibly forget that fabulous Second Knight on the radio four years ago...?)

Youn’s curriculum vitae shows that he’s been around and around, and he’s used his time profitably in honing his voice into a force to be reckoned with. It’s big, bright and it lingers in the ear -- a baritone with a distinctive vocal (and stage) profile. Unfortunately, Wagner gives Kurwenal only one real crack at taking command of the stage, but Youn made the most of it on this occasion in his third act duologue with Tristan.

The Cologne Opera has in Youn and Zhidkova a pair of powerhouse vocalists, and its beleaguered management should make sure it doesn't miss a golden opportunity to market their respective and combined merits. Here’s a proposal for the suits to consider: Cast Zhidkova as Dalilah in the current dropout-ridden new production of Samson, whose scandals are making it fodder for ridicule. Nobody will give a damn about the production if she’s on stage. (If she hasn’t learned the role yet, lock her in a rehearsal room with a coach or just have her sing it from the vocal score.) Mount Rigoletto and Il Tabarro for Youn. Recast Barbiere and revive Don Carlo for them both. Top line them in a Germany's Got Talent monster benefit concert. If you don’t do it now, somebody else soon will...

Two other noteworthy cast changes at this performance: Barbara Schneider-Hofstetter as Isolde and Mischa Schelomianski as King Mark. I first heard Schneider-Hofstetter as Minnie about seven years ago in Wiesbaden, when big plans for her were being hatched. A number of them have materialised. The voice has also grown in the interim – large enough to give Zhidkova a breath-baiting sprint for the money. Their first and second act exchanges raised the decibel level way into the red zone -- unusually exciting Can Belto -- more commonly heard on Pasta Nights. In its current estate, Hofstetter's soprano is evenly distributed and brightens metallically under pressure. She also possesses two pigments that complete the picture Gabriella Schnaut tried with variable success to paint: a pair of secure, well-placed and sustained high-Cs. (In fact, Gabi could manage neither top C convincingly, when she visited Cologne with Siegfried Jerusalem in Gunter Kramer's laser-lousy production a couple of years ago.)

If the audience applause level at the curtain calls was any indication, Schelomianski is a house favorite. He has a rich, compelling sound, but I would have welcomed a more plaintive articulation of King Mark’s self-pity.

Robert Gambill’s Tristan was in far better form that in his previous performance. His top, especially in the third act, seemed freer and more luminous than it was five days earlier. In fact, Gambill enacts the role more effectively than a couple of better known Tristans, who have appeared at the Met lately.

Some ragged entrances and intonation issues – an oboe was at one point markedly out of tune in the third act – diminished the otherwise grand sweep of the orchestral playing somewhat, but the Cologne Opera’s music director Markus Stenz maintained the impression he initially gave me of a master Wagner conductor well into the making.

© Sam H. Shirakawa

A Lotta Night music

After Bremen, Sam went to Cologne to see their controversial new production of

WAGNER: TRISTAN UND ISOLDE
Cologne Opera
3 MAY 2009

The once mighty Cologne Opera has been having a tough time of late. This season the company has met with much printed and public disapprobation. In the latest scandal, the premiere of a new Samson et Dalilah, set for 2 May, had to be postponed a week. The originally announced Dalilah quit, after finding the production -- reportedly redolent with violence and rape -- too distressing. Her replacement dropped out at the last minute, citing illness.

On the following afternoon, I arrived from Bremen, just in time to witness the specter of another roundly heckled new production on the boards of the opera house. Few, it seems, liked David Pountney's setting of Tristan und Isolde when it was unveiled back in March. Even fewer liked the principals. Not much could be done about the production, but several cast changes were effected, and the show has been going on with hastily engaged replacements. The performance I was now witnessing sort of amounted to a somewhat newer new production of Tristan.

Since I was not present at the premiere, comparisons are not just odious but impossible. Pountney certainly has his detractors, but I certainly have been subjected to productions of Tristan that struck me as far worse. The only substantive objection I have to Pountney's staging is its visual disconnect between the middle and outer acts. Designer Robert Israel sets the first act with a grey ship on a grey Irish Sea. The last act is set in a similarly grey-hued cemetery. The second act, however, looks like an outsize fun house you might find in the toy section of a department store-- bright colored slabs of geometric constructs, strewn about a slowly revolving turntable.

None of this bothered me in the slightest, because nearly everything else about this performance was so surprising, so bodacious!
Swiss soprano Marion Ammann was a last-minute replacement, but she looked, moved and above all sounded as though she had been the chosen Isolde all along. But be warned -- especially those awaiting the Second Coming of St. Birgit: Ammann is different and quite possibly a throwback to an earlier epoch. How such a solid but beautiful sound can emanate from such a slender, willowy torso is truly a wonder. And, ah, the sweet sorrow that informs her glance as her tall, tortured Isolde remembers how she became powerless to prevent herself from dropping the sword, as she tried to kill Tristan: simply haunting. Those who recently heard Irene Theorin at the Met might summon comparisons, but Ammann is warmer, more vulnerable: Germaine Lubin resurrected.

Ammann also had the good fortune of playing off American Robert Gambill, another replacement whose grandly nuanced Tristan sounded and acted as though weeks of rehearsal had come to satisfying fruition. Gambill is a Tamino-turned-Tristan, who I first heard as Siegmund about eight years ago. He looks like a leading man and moves graciously. His voice has heft and stamina, but it tends to recede as it ascends beyond F, which puts a clamp on the tone, where it ought to open out. Nonetheless, Gambill shows signs of neither wear nor tear, as he finds himself in what appears to be a golden period of his career.

Some years ago, when Soviet mezzo-soprano Elena Obratztova took the Free World by storm, I wondered (perversely) how she would sound as Brangäne. Now I know. But putting it this way does disservice to both Obratztova and a diminutive, Lolita-looking singer named Elena Zhidkova. How often can you describe a singer portraying Brangäne as "hair-raising?" As big-voiced as Amman and Gambill are, Zhidkova's is by far bigger and ballsier than you're likely ever to get without invoking Sigrid Onegin. And like Onegin, she is also capable of mystical subtlety, as evidenced in her exchanges with Ammann. So mind your backs ladies, and I mean YOU -- Olga, Ewa, Larissa, Magdalena et cie: this one's for real and her handlers are comin' straight atcha!

Thomas J. Meyer was a virile sounding Kurwenal, Gerardo Graciacano a malicious Melot and Alfred Reiter an unusually introspective King Marke.

The performance was ultimately made cohesive by the direction of Markus Stenz, the Cologne Opera's music chief, who induced the kind of orchestral tension that I have come to expect mostly from much older Wagner conductors. He shows the kind of innate understanding of this work, at which recordings under great conductors hint, but never teach. Too bad, he chose to perform it with standard cuts -- no Tag und Nacht, etc.

Whoever played the English horn solo (no program credit) in the third act was marvelous.

The takeaway: Forget about the noise surrounding this production. This performance ranks among the all-time top five of the 40-odd Tristans I have attended thus far. The other four? Don't ask.

© Sam Shirakawa

Tristan Production Photo courtesy of Opera Cologne (© Klaus Lefebvre)

Lehman does Tristan....

An internet correspondent, REG, was in the house to hear Gary Lehman (hero of last seson's star-crossed Tristan run), sing his first Tristan of this season on Tuesday night (12/2/08), replacing an indisposed Peter Seiffert:

. . . . Almost as interesting was tonight's performance of Tristan. The MET, I think, is already experiencing revival-itis with this production, and much of the problem has to lie with Baron Danny-boy, who led an at-best fitful performance. When Mozart died, the young Beethoven, who had hoped to study with him and was instead shuttled off to an older and somewhat less-motivated Franz Josef Haydn, was told by his patrons, "Receive Mozart from the hands of Hadyn." I suppose in going to Danny-boy performances, I always expect to be somehow handed performances of the depth and complexity of Furtwangler, but in the event he almost consistently disappoints, and tonight was no exception. While I think as a pianist he remains, when he is in technical fettle, first-rate, his major limitation as a conductor is that he has, essentially, the attention span of a gnat - at any given moment, there can be a lovely emphasis (he particularly seems to favor the darker woodwinds, and the strings sounded heavenly towards the end of Act II when Tristan turns to Isolde and asks her if she will accompany him in exile), but he doesn't ever seem to 'see' these details against each other, or in terms of a larger structure, and so solecisms and musical tautologies abound....I thought that the entire first part of Act III might never end, although Gary Lehman himself did a wonderful job as Tristan. A pianist can get away with moment-to-moment insights in recital, in quicksilver differences in touch and musical underlinings, but a conductor cannot so easily do so. I thought the orchestra sounded well, but it didn't have either the glow that a great Levine performance can have, or, for that matter, the warmth I'd hoped to hear from the Baron.

As to casting, I thought Lehman did a more-than creditable job in the house. The sound isn't particularly clarion, or even highly colored - he is clearly not a pushed-up baritone - but he (almost) never tired, and he saved enough of himself to be impressive indeed on stage in Act III, even with a few moments where he lost focus. If Peter Gelb's Dram Shop ever opens, I'm afraid that Katarina Dalayman is most likely to be found at the Kool-Aid counter - she has almost all the notes, and she's obviously listened when people have told her to move, but as to the singing, it was largely dispassionate and, frankly, not much more than dutiful - if she felt the role, she certainly didn't share it. If Voigt has some moments of vocal frailty, she is still an Isolde in bearing and line, and can dominate the orchestra and the music where she has to. Michelle DeYoung is a fine singer, but I thought the voice smaller (or was the orchestra louder?) than last time around, and this is a tough role if you don't make a real impact in the middle of the voice. Rene Pape was passionate and made a lot of the words (particularly in the upper half of his voice), but though Marti Salminen isn't the superstar the Pape is, I thought Salminen's King Marke a far greater accomplishment - the voice was more solid, the bearing more regal, and interpretively Salminen knows that an effective interpretation starts from a single point of view, and not a kaleidescope of individual moments. But you know me, I'm not complaining.

The production has been tampered with a bit - most obviously the various-colors of lighting seem to have been eliminated in favor of a recourse at moments of emotion to yellow verging on chartreuse, and more unfortunately, the crespuscular darkness of Act II and the hieratic staging, which were all of a piece, have been sacrificed to something both more neutral, and naturalistic, at the cost of some of the sense of suspense and wonder in that critical scene.

Heads up to listeners to tomorrow's MET broadcast --- Mr. Lehman will be singing Tristan (finally getting his due...), but (and it's a big caveat) Pape has canceled and Youn is singing King Marke.

TRISTAN UND ISOLDE at the Metropolitan Opera

Sam Shirakawa has been to the Opening Night of the Met's run of Tristan und Isolde:

28 November 2008

A surprise saved Friday night's season premiere of Tristan und Isolde at the Met from terminal boredom:

René Pape has sung King Mark over a dozen times at the Met, and it would seem that he's old news. He is still too young for the part, but surprisingly, he is even more astonishing every time you hear him, and he turned out to be the glue that held a patchy performance together.

Headlining the new news, of course, was the house debut of Daniel Barenboim. It seems he's performed everywhere, except at the Met. He has recorded Tristan commercially, and numerous live performances and broadcasts of his forays into the work can be found on tape.

Remember that sampling of his way with Tristan back in 1989, when he assembled Hildegarde Behrens, Gary Lakes and L'Orchestre de Paris for a concert version of Act Two at Avery Fisher Hall?

If you don't remember, that may be the key to the disappointment I, at least, felt at Friday's performance. That long ago performance was not memorable, and neither was Friday night's.

Forget about those knee-jerk complaints that may come up: the orchestra was too loud, the sound synthesis was overly brass heavy, the textural contrasts were exaggerated. These are all signature characteristics of the Barenboim-the-Conductor brand. A lot of people love it and buy it, especially on CD where digital technology can produce aural miracles that have little to do with the source material. But no filter except denial can disguise the zits, warts and whoopsy-daisies exposing themselves mercilessly within the real-time exigencies of a live performance. On Friday, there was plenty of rhythmic smudging among the singers and vast stretches of listlessness that prevented the performance from taking off or shaping up into an organic whole. This, despite the Met orchestra playing as though its life depended on it. [During rehearsals several orchestra members commented on how exited they were to work with Barenboim.] Fabulous as the Met Orchestra always is, and no-less so for the wonderful English Horn solo by Pedro R. Diaz, it was left to Pape to provide rescue and respite.

Evidence of the Gestalt that Friday's performance was producing could best be seen in the droves of people departing, even during the first intermission. Does this say more about the departed than about brand DB? Barenboim brings them in, oh yes, but for those many who left, it apparently was not a night to remember.

Barenboim was not entirely to blame, unless he approved the casting, which he almost certainly must have. After all, he led the opera just two months ago with three of the principals -- Katarina Dalayman, Michelle DeYoung and Gerd Grochowski -- at Berlin's Staatsoper unter den Linden, where he is Music Director. (And another lead singer in that short string of performances is also in town at the moment.)

Let's face it folks: Dalayman is at best a B-line Isolde. Despite some attractive singing in the softer passages of the second act love duet, she failed to summon mortal rage in the cursing climax of the Narrative and delivered a diffident Liebestod. Her top notes were squally, her middle range middling, and her lower register thin. Dalayman was a laudable Brangaene when she made her Met debut in 1999, and I marveled at her Lisa in Pique Dame in Munich several years ago. Net-net though: Katya Darling, Isolde is not the way to go.

Peter Seiffert as Tristan is an appealing Wagner tenor and an effective stage personality, but he is developing a worrisome beat in his voice -- which also is showing signs of wear. He tired toward the end of his third act delirium. A few seasons ago, he sang one of the finest Tannhäusers that the Met has heard since the opera was revived in 1976. Why is he now palpably ruining his voice?

Michelle de Young reprises her well-received Brangaene from last season. She is one of the Met's brightest young singers, and she might well take a hard look at Dalayman's misstep in considering what roles she would be ill-advised to undertake.

Gerd Grochowski made an objection-free debut as Kurwenal. Stephen Gaertner was a serviceable Melot.

While Barenboim deservedly has won acclaim for his Wagner, I have always thought his true life resides at the piano. He is scheduled to perform Liszt's operatic transcriptions at the Met on 14 December. Now THAT should be a treat.

©Sam H. Shirakawa

Tristan Unseen

Our friend Sam caught one last Tristan:

Have you ever attended an opera performance and wished the awful sets would disappear? Of course, you can always simply listen to broadcasts or recordings. But nothing quite takes the place of being in medias res, especially if there's a ballet, battle or parade that you don't want to miss.

You CAN have your wish and hear it too at the Metropolitan Opera.

Score desks are located along each side of the uppermost tier next to the seats in the Family Circle boxes. They cost $10 (for regular performances). They afford no view of the stage, but they have (mostly) superb acoustics. You can hear nuances in the voices and instrumental details that sound engineers manning hi-def mikes rarely pick up. The lamp-lit desk allows enough room for a score or a libretto. If the performance is going great, the aural experience is made all the more exciting. If it sucks, you can substitute the score with a book, magazine or racing form. (Newspapers are not advised. Even tabloids are too large and make a racket when you turn pages.)

Visually, there's not much to miss in the Met's current production of Tristan, which finished its six-performance series on Friday night. The unit set is unremittingly dreary (perhaps intentionally). Brief splashes of retina blasting back-lighting give little respite. And Tristan, unfortunately, has no ballets.

Friday night, I attended my fourth Tristan at the Met in little over two weeks, and I really didn't want to spend five more hours counting all the triangular forms built into the scenery. So I acquired a score desk.

No diversions were necessary. It was arguably the best performance of the four I heard in the house, and a photo-finish with last Saturday's broadcast. Ben Heppner AND Deborah Voigt appeared together for the first time in the title roles at the house, after illness forced them each to cancel several performances. (Heppner dropped out before the season premiere; Voigt withdrew from one performance in the middle of the second act, and skipped another one entirely.)

Heppner rarely has sounded better, despite some wrongly sung passages in the second act. Voigt regained her poise and confidence, following intermittent vocal squalls in previous performances. Michelle deYoung (replacing Margaret Jane Wray), Eike Wilm Schulte, and the redoubtable Matti Salminen rounded out what turned out to be as close to a dream cast as anyone could hope for in this day and age.

But the star of the show was the Met Orchestra under James Levine. The ensemble always plays well, and frequently scales the heights, but the muses were in attendance last night: the playing was uniformly Olympian. Primus inter pares: Pedro R. Diaz in the English horn solos.

If you didn't make it to the Met on Friday night, you could have experienced almost exactly what I heard. At the last minute, the Met decided to stream the performance live via its website. That meant that opera lovers anywhere in the world with access to a computer could have heard it. The Met should do it more often -- but with a bit more advance notice.

© SAM H. SHIRAKAWA

Travails of Tristan continued...

Can one believe that the Met's jinxed Tristan run this season has fallen prey to yet another disaster? Read on . . . .

Tristan und Isolde - Metropolitan Opera, March 18, 2008

First Ben Heppner took ill and withdrew from the Met season's first performance of Tristan und Isolde last week. His place was taken by John Mac Master. At the next performance, Gary Lehman replaced Mac Master and Deborah Voigt quit in the middle of the second act, felled by an upset stomach. Last night, a scenery malfunction in the last act knocked out Gary Lehman, who was singing Tristan.

Here's how it looked like it happened. The mat on which Lehman was lying supinate apparently cut loose from its moorings and sent him like a trajectory head-first down the steeply raked stage right into the prompter's box. A computer glitch could also have been to blame, because the mat glides slowly down stage from the rear over the course of several minutes. Suddenly the mat simply raced toward the prompter's box.

Mark Showalter and Eike Wilm Schulte, who were on stage at the time, rushed to the side of the motionless Lehman, followed by several stage personnel. Lehman stood up after a few moments, and walked about the stage, rubbing his neck. The curtain was brought down, and a stage manager appeared to say, "Gary is o.k., but he needs a few moments and a glass of water before he continues."

According to the Associated Press report, a doctor examined Lehman, before allowing him to proceed with perhaps the most arduous scene for any singer in all opera. When the curtain went up again about 10 minutes later, a huge round of applause greeted Lehman, who was again lying, arms outstretched, on the killer mat. By any standard, he gave a towering performance of Tristan's delirium ridden visions -- all the more astonishing, given the potentially serious injury he had just sustained.

At the final curtain calls, could James Levine, who is well-known for passing around complements, have given Lehman a pat on the back, an extra solo bow or some kind of acknowledgment? Yes. Did he even bother to shake Lehman's hand in full view of the public? No.

Despite a momentary memory lapse by Lehman late in the second act, and some rhythmic uncertainty from Voigt shortly after her third act entrance, the performance was, by and large, the best of the three given so far. Michelle De Young, Matti Salminen and Schulte were in especially good form.

So who will sing Tristan at Saturday's world-wide live telecast? At last night's intermissions (both long enough to hit the head twice), the video screen above the box office said, TBA. According to Robert Dean Smith's website, he will go to the Mat from Hell on Saturday (the Associated Press refers to him as Roger Dean Smith.)

© 2008 Sam Shirakawa

Tristan - latest scuttlebutt

Word was that Robert Dean Smith would be singing Tristan tomorrow night. However the latest scuttlebutt is that Smith will not be singing and that Gary Lehman, who sang the role so successfully on Friday night will be repeating the role. No news yet about who will be singing for the broadcast (which is also being broadcast in HD to movie theaters everywhere...).

I am assuming that Voigt will be back tomorrow to sing Isolde. . . .

TAG TRISTAN AND A TALE OF TWO ISOLDES

Herewith Sam Shirakawa's take on Friday evening's Tristan (and he had NOT read my post before sending this to me):

Friday, 14 March 2008

Opera distills mankind's noblest instincts. Opera harmonizes the cognizance of what lies within our innermost selves. Yadda yadda yadda. Mozart said so. So did Wagner.

Attending the first two performances of the Met's Tristan this season has made me cognizant about something of my innermost self: I'm a blood sport fan.

The indisposition of Ben Heppner last Monday (10 March) pushed a certain John Mac Master into the Coliseum of modern day opera. Nearly four thousand pairs of ears heard him come close to eviscerating his lovely fragile voice in the Killer Third Act.

John Mac Master emerged bloodied, but apparently not sufficiently able-bodied to be thrown to the lions again on Friday night (14 March). Heeding the implicit mumblings for fresh meat, the Met's management shoved one Gary Lehman onto its mopped-up stage. His Met debut (!) was preceded by an appeal for understanding for the intrepid Christian from guilt-edged Met General Manager Peter Gelb, doing his utmost to refrain from sounding like a carnival barker.

Lehman's first act went better than I, at least, expected. In fact, for someone who was singing the role for the first time professionally, he performed beyond expectations exceedingly. But Lehman's Trial by Tristan was far from over.

A seemingly long first intermission had some speculating that James Levine was furiously tickling the ivories backstage, taking Lehman through pesky parts of the next act. Maybe.

But another drama was unfolding.

Shortly before the love duet in the second act, the evening's franchise, Deborah Voigt, walked off, leaving Lehman to continue singing his part, even after the tabs were brought down. A stage manager or such promptly appeared to say that Voigt was feeling unwell, but the performance would continue shortly with Janice Baird.

The switch must have been pre-determined, because James Levine never left the podium, and the performance continued at roughly the same place where it had dribbled to a halt. When the curtain went up again, a huge round of applause greeted Lehman and his new Isolde. And just as though you were switching your remote from CD 9 to CD 10, Baird picked up as if she had been performing from the start.

Statuesque and exuding confidence, Baird went on to conquer. She already had created a buzz so positive in the unpaved parts of the operatic world over the past decade, that I've often tried to chase down her Salome, Bruhnnhilde, or ANYTHING at Chemnitz, Essen and a couple of other venues. But her schedule never coincided with my travel plans until last night.

Now, suddenly, I was confronted with an Isolde whose luminosity emanated from within, rather than from the real and metaphorical spotlights thrown on her. Voigt already had traversed the two ceiling-level Cs before Baird stepped in, but Baird evinced the requisite range and palate for adumbrating what remained with variety, flexibility and most appealing vulnerability. A few gaffes here and there centered mostly on patches of un-centered intonation. Eminently forgivable if you remember that some other Isoldes have shlepped through whole evenings under the note.

Baird is listed on the Met's current roster, but a search of the Met's website turned up no scheduled performances. If this was also her Met debut [editor's note: it was.] under most unusual or unique circumstances, didn't she too warrant a let's-give-it-up-for-Jan pep spiel from Gelb? But more substantively: If you're playing Tag Tristan with the guys, Pete, how about letting a gal join the game? There are four performances left in the current series.

Changing partners left Lehman unfazed, as he forged on to surmount the rigors of the love duet and the terrors of the third act with blazing thrusts of energy and voice. This was heady stuff -- about as close as opera is likely to come anytime soon to Manning and Tyree in that Unforgettable Fourth Quarter.

The vice that nearly trapped him a couple of times, though, was sporadic rhythmic sluggishness. No big deal. Before we get ahead of where he's possibly heading, though, let's realize that Lehman may be a herrliches Knabe, but he is no force of nature yet. Now that he's proven that he can do big Wagner in the Big Time right out of the box, he should stick to Erik and Parsifal for a while.

The rest of the cast sounded even better than on Monday night. Especially Salminen.

For the record, the performance drew to an end around half-past midnight, making it a candidate for the Guinness Book of Records.

All in all, my thirst for blood sport, or just blood, was certainly aroused on Friday but left largely unquenched. But then, there's next week...

That's when it's said that a tenor who has sung Tristan more than once will face the lions. If Robert Dean Smith does as well as he's been doing in Europe of late -- and he has done well every time I have heard him in person -- nobody will be confusing him with Harry Dean Smith.

© SAM H. SHIRAKAWA 2008

Is There a Tristan in the House? . . .

On second thought ... is there an ISOLDE in the house?

Last night's Tristan und Isolde was nothing if not an adventure. The audience was forewarned by Mr. Gelb before the curtain rose that Gary Lehman, the night's Tristan (and the second in as many performances) was singing the role, not only for the first time at the Met, but for the first time EVER. There was an audible "Ooph!" from the audience ... and then cathartic laughter. The Met has been doing its best to fill the ailing Ben Happner's shoes, but John Mac Master, who had sung Tristan on opening night, had been booed (something I don't think is ever justified when a cover singer is doing his best to fill in at the last moment).

Lehman was several cuts better than Mac Master, from comments I heard during the first intermission. His voice, while not the most beautiful instrument I have ever heard, was clear and large - at times he sounded bigger than Voigt. His German diction was excellent. Lehman looks good on stage. There were a few awkward moments, mostly due to his lack of proper rehearsal. But he was a stalwart stand-in. As the performance progressed, he became obviously more comfortable. I found his exchange in Act Two with King Marke, where Marke asks him to explain his betrayal, particularly moving. And best of all, he sang through all of his Act Three monologues with understandable caution, but without a hint of strain or fatigue. The circle of international Wagner tenors has just grown by one.

One wonders what was really in that potion Tristan and Isolde drank at the end of Act One. Overshadowing Mr. Lehman's impressive debut, however, was Deborah Voigt's sudden indisposition during their discussion of that potion toward the beginning of Act Two. Shortly after Brangaene had left the stage, as her Tristan continued to sing to her, Ms. Voigt ran off stage right, and shortly after that the curtain came down, the lights in the pit were doused, and the music came to a halt. Someone came out in front of the curtain to announce Ms. Voigt's indisposition and begged the audience's patience while her cover, Janice Baird, was put into her costume and makeup. Some ten minutes later, the house lights dimmed and the performance resumed.

Ms. Baird has a warm, ample sound, not quite large enough to surmount the loudest that James Levine's orchestra put out. But she never forced her voice and was always musical. Especially in the beginning, and in the Liebestod, when she was tiring a bit, she displayed some flatness. But her performance was overall a pleasure.

The first intermission seemed longer than usual, and when Levine only entered the pit several moments after the house lights went down, I assumed that he had been doing last-minute coaching with the evening's Tristan (still a third singer has been announced for the Tristan next Tuesday, March 18th). But the New York Times reports that Ms. Voigt told management after Act One that she might not be able to complete the performance. The cover was called and Ms. Voigt went on for the beginning of Act Two. I heard no hint of her indisposition in her singing, save for a couple of less than stellar top notes, usually the glory of her voice.

Overall, notwithstanding all the distractions, it was a successful Tristan. Matti Salminen continues to amaze as King Marke. In his mid-sixties, with occasional slight unsteadiness, he is still a musical force of nature. He conveys the gravitas and grief of the King better than any other singer I have heard in this role (including René Pape, who isn't old enough yet to entirely capture the exquisite grief of the aging and childless King). Eike Wilm Schulte, as Kurwenal, was also astounding. I have always enjoyed hearing him. Schulte is one of those rare singers who communicates the music without getting in the way of it. As one of my companions last night said, he's so natural you don't realize just how good he is.

The performance ended at 12:35 with generous ovations for all involved, especially the Tristan and Isolde, Lehman and Baird. I can only send the Met good wishes for the next performance of Tristan on Tuesday....

Full Circle?

Sam Shirakawa has been busy attending performances in New York of late. Here is his second review for us in the past week:

Tristan und Isolde - Season Premiere, March 10, 2008

A poignant reunion of sorts may have gone unnoticed at the Metropolitan Opera's season premiere of Tristan und Isolde last night (10 March). Twenty-seven years after Matti Salminen made his sensational house debut as King Marke, he returned to portray the cuckolded king under James Levine, who led his first Tristan that same evening, 9 January 1981.

The depredations of time may have taken their toll in various ways on both men, but not on their talents. Levine's on-going musical achievements need no reprise here, for they are neither surprising in their extent, nor unexpected in their proportions. He's a superstar. Salminen has trumped the odds for survival in the stellar regions of the lyric theater, where brilliant vocal talents blaze and burn out each season like Eoman candles.

At his debut, lo those nearly three decades ago, Salminen transformed Marke's usually interminable monologue from a dreary whine-fest into the pivotal moment of the performance, his glowering basso forging the old monarch's "why-me?" self-pity into a statement of Lear-like rage against the death of friendship and the dying of the light. At Monday's performance, Salminen ruled again, but differently this time, as he stood before the drug-addled lovers in their post-coital disarray, to render a heart-breaking requiem for Marke's hope -- his dreams of happiness in old age so cravenly destroyed. While usage and the passage of time have mellowed that bronze hue that captivated listeners at Salminen's debut, the essential plangency of his magnificent instrument has deepened and fermented nobly. Rare is the bass who can survive long enough to nurture his resources to endow this frequently tedious music with such supernal sorrow. Blessed is the listener who savors it.

The big buzz on the season premiere as an event, of course, was Deborah Voigt's first complete New York Isolde. She's already recorded the role and given us live bleeding chunks of her take on the "Irische Maid" at other local venues, so the first-night crowd had a good idea of what to expect.

If expectations centered on revelation, Ms. Voigt delivered disclosure. All the notes were there, and she looked better than ever, having shed a wardrobe's worth of weight. Voigt has always been an interesting listen but a rather dowdy look. That, mercifully, is changing. Girth loss has had no perceptible impact on her voice, but it has palpably enlivened her stage presence. Her figure has hardly become glamorous, but her movements have become more animated and her gestures more telling. Her Isolde is still a promising work in progress.

That progress was challenged by the last-minute substitution of John Mac Master as Tristan, who stepped in at the dress rehearsal for the indisposed Ben Heppner. Some jerk at the back of the house booed him at the curtain calls, but such disapprobation was both cruel and unwarranted. Mac Master has a way to go before he becomes a world-class Tristan, if indeed he strives toward that end. But he, unlike so many other newbies to the role, has the core material for it. It would be a stretch to call his voice big, but Mac Master makes no effort to stretch it either. Which is a good thing, for he had patches of near-distress while traversing Tristan's mad scene. Nonetheless, it is big enough to cut through the orchestra at full tilt. There is musicality in every note he sings, and thanks possibly to Levine's wise tutoring, he parses out the cantilena with enticing style. This is a voice with which one can abide comfortably over five hours (yes, the performance began at 7:00 pm and ended about midnight). But it would be churlish to cast a verdict prematurely on his future as a Wagner singer, as some critics have done already.

Levine's predilection for slow tempi in later Wagner appears to have ripened over his 30-some performances of Tristan at the Met, but they seem less listless than they used to be. At Monday's performance, in fact, his basic tempo -- despite some rhythmic quirks in keeping orchestra and singers together -- served to illuminate the score rather than belabor it. Reginald Goodall often cautioned conductors to wait until they mature sufficiently before tackling late Wagner. Levine has arrived at that point.

Rounding out Monday's cast, Michelle DeYoung was a thrilling Brangaene, and Eike Wilm Schulte, starting off a bit brusquely, turned in a surprisingly mellifluous Kurvenal, especially in the final act.

If the voices that inhabit the imperiled state of opera are meaningful to you, do not fail to attend the Met's current Tristan. Matti Salminen is a treasure. Hasn't the time come for New York to hear his Philip and Sachs?

© Sam H. Shirakawa 2008

[Editor's comment: Geoffrey was also at Monday evening's performance. He was likewise impressed by Salminen and Schulte. Having seen Salminen's debut as King Marke, his mastery of this role remained deeply satisfying, for which no surprise. The surprise of the evening was Schulte's final act -- by far the most intrinsically musical, most nuanced and most moving reading of Kurwenal's music Geoffrey has ever heard in person. It was also gratifying to hear an uncut Tristan, but was this a wise decision given that Mac Master was virtually untried in the role?]