San Francisco Opera: Tristan & Isolde

I was at the first performance of San Francisco Opera's superb production of Tristan & Isolde, & went again, last night, to the second.

As I said to someone (actually, no doubt more than one person) before the performance, there are opera fans, & there are Wagner fans, & though there's a Venn Diagram intersection there, the two are not really the same thing. I'm tempted to add another category, those for whom Tristan is itself set apart, even from the rest of Wagner's works. Tristan is not an opera, nor (pace the Master & his acolytes) a music-drama: it is a psychic derangement; it is flesh (infused with never-ending yearning, & deeper & more powerful than anything our actual poor little meat-machines can manage) transubstantiated into sound, swelling, cresting, subsiding only to tumesce forward, stretching endurance almost beyond comprehension; it is an auricular opiate &, like the products of the nodding poppy, it can nauseate some while leaving others disoriented (on a spiritual as well as physical level) for days, while they still long for another dose. Like Rilke's Archaic Torso of Apollo, it is an artwork with an imperative message: You must change your life.

This is, of course, not an easy command to follow, or even to comprehend; hence some of the discontent this disturbing, titanic work leaves in its wake. During my first performance, those seated around me were rapt; on the second, there were the usual gaggle of operatic whisperers & crinklers of cellophane. I would gladly have beaten them to death, my only defense being: "Your Honor, they were crinkling during Tristan!" The usual intermission exasperations – people moving too slowly, standing obliviously in some obviously inconvenient spot, expressing their stupid opinions too loudly – filled me with more than the usual rage. We all seem so much less significant in the light of this work (A judgment from which I do not, of course, exclude myself.) This is . . . not a healthy way to approach life.

Tristan, though, is not a "healthy" work, whatever that might be, unless having your little boat upturned, throwing you into more than usually stormy psychic seas, counts, in some long run, as healthy. The Wagnerian penchant for extremities – greatest of heroes, weakest of cowards, most wondrous of women, deepest of betrayals – is here in full force, & it doesn't take long after the initial movement of Eun Sun Kim's masterly baton to pull us into this worldscape. Here betrayal is the deepest truth, day, strikingly, with its sunlight & openness, is the enemy of all we long for, & night what we pine for unceasingly (that is, if "we" are pulled into the psychological orbit of the two lovers; some no doubt resist). Night isn't even our day-following hours; it is death, but not even death, oblivion but not quite that; it is some sort of cosmic universal force, darkly centered in a somehow joyous non-existence (is this bliss because we experience oblivion, or is the bliss so intense as to swirl us into a state of oblivion?).

I overheard someone during an intermission talking about "well, when two people are very much in love", as if, had things fallen out a bit differently, Tristan & Isolde would be picking out china patterns & shopping for a nice little castle somewhere. In this work love & sex stand in for something mightier than our little awkwardnesses, as with angelic intercourse in Paradise Lost, where the heavenly lovers:

obstacle find none
Of membrane, joint, or limb, exclusive bars:
Easier than Air with Air, if Spirits embrace,
Total they mix, Union of Pure with Pure
Desiring; nor restrain'd conveyance need
As Flesh to mix with Flesh, or Soul with Soul.

(Book 8, ll 624 - 629)

The world keeps intruding, though, usually in the form of King Marke & his court; in this production, directed by Paul Curran, the first act ends (after the lovers have downed the death/love potion that gave them permission to act on their deepest desires, & they need to be forcibly separated from their embrace of each other by the faithful Brangäne & Kurwenal) as a white-clad, somewhat ghostly looking Marke, elevated on a mobile platform, moves toward them from behind. At the end of the second act, the lovers' ecstatic duet ends abruptly with the sudden return of King & court, led by Melot, who has accused Tristan of betraying his King & loving uncle. The third act would end with Marke uniting the two, except Tristan has died & Isolde sweeps aside Marke & the rest of the world with her enraptured Liebestod (only to have the world sweep that aside for us, the audience, who must stagger out of our seats & wander back through crowded streets & noisy trains to the theatrical sets we call reality).

We, of course, can revisit the experience not only through our imperfect memories but also through the many recordings easily (maybe too easily) available to us. Though every note of the score (performed uncut in this production) may have sunk into our psyches, there is still a freshness & force to hearing it live, even in our days of dozens of recorded choices, especially with playing as dauntless & inspired as the Opera Orchestra's. I can only imagine how mighty, how intoxicating, this work appeared to those experiencing it in the opera house in the days before recording, when only rumor, piano reductions, or the occasional excerpt performed in concert could give people some idea of what was involved. (Even for us, though, there are new things to notice; this time I was particularly struck by Wagner's astute & careful use of the sparkling harp.)

Even so, excerpts, piano reductions, even recordings, can't give you a full sense of the experience. Sitting through it is part of it. The music keeps unrolling gloriously, perverse in its beauty; even Brangäne's second act warning to the lovers to beware floats above them like a celestial benediction. Are we hearing it as they hear it, as a beautiful sound that doesn't quite reach them? Wagner is careful not to ridicule or dismiss King Marke & his Court, or the other representatives of the world, such as the Steersman in the first act & the shepherd in the third. Marke has a touching monologue about Tristan's betrayal, one that gives us some sense of the depth & dignity possible in being merely, or "merely", human. The interior perspective of the lovers is not the only, or even perhaps the best, way of seeing things. One can long for rapturous annihilation while still realizing there might be other, though perhaps less grand or deep, possibilities. These cosmic forces are too difficult for us to live with in our daily way.

This famously or notoriously interior & lengthy work presents considerable challenges in staging; this production makes astute use of touch – the characters mostly stand apart from each other, so a hand on a shoulder (as Isolde's on Tristan's when she urges him towards the potion) or two hands slowly joining (as during the heedless lovers' second act duet) carry considerable force. Astute use is made of lighting, in harmony with the longing for darkness / night / oblivion of the lovers; when they first drink what Brangäne has given them, they fall to the floor & the already dim stage suddenly goes dark as the unfolding music suspends them & us in transformative time; as the light returns, isolating the two of them in its white pools, they slowly reach their hands towards each other, coming close to contact.

The pale walls – high, with windows up above, criss-crossed by timbers – that portray the interior of the ship in Act 1 return in Act 3's delirium & isolation, only this time hung askew, deranged, smashed: a society of shipwreck. Act 2 has more formal white walls, a bit palatial looking, with a large tree in the front: only the tree's branches are stubby, knotted; the tree, which is all a lovely silver, slants to one side. It is beautiful but thwarted, frustrated. Tristan's costumes are mostly modernish, a sort of suit & white shirt; Isolde is in a long green-gold robe, like a Celtic princess, & Brangäne in a similar robe of sort of a maroon. Marke wears a long pale tunic, hovering somewhere between medieval & contemporary. When Melot & company rush in at the climax of Act 2, they are accompanied by soldiers looking very medieval in chain mail & dark red velvety tunics. It's a striking effect, given the sudden intrusion of a storybook-medieval look. But even Tristan's more modern garb, which helps set the hero apart, suits the ambiguous time-setting; this is a world in which swords & magic potions are plausible, but also a psychological / spiritual / mythic world beyond the clanking of such plot devices.

The whole cast was strong – beyond strong; dazzling, given the sheer physicals demands of this work. Christopher Oglesby, as the singer of the haunting sea chantey in Act 1; Thomas Kinch in the small but striking role of Melot; Christopher Oglesby as the loyal shepherd in Act 3 & Samuel Kidd as the Steersman; Kwangchul Youn as a dignified, touching King Marke; Wolfgang Koch as a gruff & loyal Kurwenal (faithful to his hero Tristan, even if he doesn't always understand Tristan the lover); Annika Schlicht as a compassionate, anguished Brangäne: all superb. But of course separate praise is due to the tireless Simon O'Neill as Tristan, whose anguished hallucinations in Act 3 blazed forth; & to the powerful, brooding Isolde of Anje Kampe, whose glorious Liebestod was the only fitting conclusion to the eveing. Eun Sun Kim shaped a clear, deep, & rich sound. (The English horn soloist, Benjamin Brogadir, also deserves highest praise!)

Twice I've been, & twice I've staggered dizzily out, spending the day (or days) afterwards with what felt like a hangover: listless, headachey, discombobulated. Yet I'm thinking of going again, if I can, tossing aside such worldly concerns as my parlous financial state & the physical & psychic after-effects. Look, I could quibble or carp about things here & there in particular performances or staging moments, but what would be the point? It would be like rating the ecstatic visions of a mystic saint. Tristan is a miracle, & as such it is impossible to stage perfectly, as we do not live in a miraculous world, but it's difficult for me to imagine performances that come closer to the unrealizable goal. This has been artistically a very successful year for San Francisco Opera.