Sid und Nancy vs. Tristan und Isolde

We've decided to take a tag-team approach for our review of the Met HD Broadcast of Tristan und Isolde. There is no way one person can possibly opine on all 5.5 hours of that monstrosity.

First up: The Music

Sid Says: Tristan und Isolde is VERY long. It would be impossible not to say that it is genius. With that much volume (both in sound and number of notes), you're going to get some really amazing moments. But it's soooo long. From the beginning notes of the overture (including an awesome bass clarinet lick) to the last notes of Isolde singing her way to her death, the music keeps going and going. Did I mention it's long? I'm a big fan of Romantic music, and Wagner writes a bunch of it for this one. Love music, martial music, sailor music, bass music, soprano music, tenor music, slow music, fast music, sad music, dying music, angry music....and 95% of it's amazing. It's just that there's a lot to try to remember. I was overwhelmed. Sadly, I only remember the six note main theme. Probably not the best thing considering the length of the show. Did I mention it was really long?


Nancy responds: Yep. Long. First act...crappy. Second and third acts...very beautiful! Therefore, I found 66.6% of the music amazing. I feel like Tony and Wilbon from PTI! I wish we still had cable, Sid.

Next: The Singers

Nancy says: Deborah ("Debbie" for you cognoscenti) Voight can sing really really loud. I mean L-O-U-D, LOUD! Truly, it's impressive. The orchestration in Wagner is just monstrous. Her voice had to carry over like a billion trombones or something. Fortunately for all of us, her voice is also amazingly beautiful. It has a really lovely shimmery vibrato, and she has great ease in her singing. It's a pleasure to watch her and listen to her. Great!

Robert Dean Smith was Debbie's fourth Tristan in as many performances (read about all of the drama here). He sounded great (in a European kind of way...little bit smaller voice, but very focused and clean vibrato and great intonation), but was a little stiff in the first two acts. In act III, however, he just blew us all away! It was so exciting to watch and hear. It was his Met Opera debut, and you could tell how thrilled he was at the curtain call. Hooray for you, Robert Dean Smith! It was especially cool to see behind the scenes before act III...he was being shown his blocking (where to go when)!!!! Talk about stress.

I kind of have a crush on the guy who played Kurwenal. He, too, had this huge voice (baritone), and would just sort of stand there and sing. We call that "park and bark" in the biz. It was cute.

Sid responds:

Dear Peter Gelb, Met Director,

If you do not hire Robert Dean Smith to sing lots of other things at the Met. You are stupid or something. Maybe it would be ok if Ben Heppner didn't get well....

Dear James Levine, Conductor,

You gotta make the old bass guy sing faster. Sheesh...he was going so slow, I thought we were going backwards through time....that may be why it's sooooo long?

Lastly: The Production

Sid Says: NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!! Bad Met!

....Um, I don't know if the designer knows this or not, but a triangle (which is what the stage was shaped like), comes to a point. When you put that point at the front, you severely limit the number of singers who can stand there (one, particularly at the size that Wagnerian singers tend to be). Somehow, bewilderingly, the set itself made the singers "upstage" themselves. (For the non-theater person, upstaging means, that a performer has to turn away from the audience to look at other performers while they are doing something important like SINGING. It is a VERY bad thing to do, especially to your fellow performers.)

When there was more than one singer on the stage, the action had to move away from the audience to allow the singers to be able to sing out over the audience. That's a pretty important logistical mistake considering the previously-mentioned million trombones. The orchestra out numbered the singers 10 to 1. They needed to be able to get as near to the front of the stage as possible.

The lighting was expensive.

The props were stupid.

Nancy Responds: I really liked the minimalist, Eastern, Zen-like feel of the production. It made an epic event seem a bit more intimate. The camera-work for the broadcast itself was a bit different for this show. They did lots of split-screen work, enabling us to see the big stage picture, and the artist's faces at the same time. It was a great idea, but "less is more (Sid's quote)." In act III, there were these weird miniature sculptures all over the stage. I couldn't tell if they were supposed to represent actual farm animals/implements of Tristan's, or if we were in his statuary. Then they disappeared later in the act before Isolde sang her famous Liebestod. They could have done without them.

The lighting was amazing! They constructed a gigantic light-box for the back of the stage.

Final Thoughts

Nancy: Overall, I came away surprised that I really loved the show. The music was gorgeous (except act I). I'm pretty sure I would sit through it again, if I knew that the singers were really top-notch. It was quite an event!

Sid: Overall, I'm feeling pretty mixed emotions. There's a sense of congratulations/relief that we made it through. I kind of felt like those of us in the audience should have had a big group hug/high five at the end. If a sense of accomplishment in watching the whole thing is a good thing, then that was the best opera I've ever seen.

It's Coming: Tristan und Isolde

This weekend will mark my first experience sitting through an entire opera composed by Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde. It's 5.5 hours long. Oh my gosh.

In fact, I have had very little exposure to Wagner's music period. I know some of the orchestral music from Tannhäuser ( I used to be a cellist), and have heard various performances of the Wesendonck Lieder (it's been suggested that Wagner may have had an affair with the poet---Mathilde Wesendonck!). I'm nervous I won't have the intestinal fortitude to withstand 5.5 hours of loud loud LOUD!

Here is Schmerzen from Wesendonck, as sung by the lovely Cheryl Studer. She is a dramatic soprano (singer of Wagner and heavier Richard Strauss), who disappeared for awhile in the late 90s due to some vocal problems, but has since had a resurgence...hooray! She was, however, sidelined by a heart attack in 2005. Yikes!:




It's not really a video, I just can't figure out how to add an mp3 file to my blog post. Any help out there?