Letting Wagner be Wagner

The State Opera saved its best for last this season, unveiling a strong new production of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde last week. While it won't make anyone forget powerhouse versions in Berlin or Vienna, it is a solid and welcome addition to the local repertoire, rendered in classic Wagnerian style.

Composing between 1857 and 1859, Wagner imbued the legend of the doomed lovers with his conviction, after reading Schopenhauer, that the highest form of true love could only be realized in death. After the first act, which sketches out the larger frame of the legend and then locks the protagonists together with a magic love potion, his Tristan is essentially a psychological drama, exploring the characters' emotional undercurrents and hurtling them toward their final, mystical union.

Bringing this to life as more than two singers wailing at each other all night is a challenge, met very well in this case by a team from Buenos Aires: stage director Marcelo Lombardero and set designer Diego Siliano. Lombardero lets Wagner be Wagner - no superfluous extras or tangential action cluttering the stage, and no histrionics by the singers. He keeps the focus where it should be, on passion, yearning and a sense of impending doom, with everything else working in service of that. After a season of watching directors go through all manner of contortions to put their own stamp on a piece, it's refreshing to see one who understands and trusts the material, and knows how to set it up and get out of the way.

Lombardero is aided greatly by Siliano, whose sets are the most impressive of any opera production this season. Using multilayered film and still projections, Siliano creates a ship at sea, a castle boudoir and a rocky seacoast with mesmerizing effectiveness. Most of the sets are oversized, dwarfing the players and pinning them in their inexorable fate. Though Siliano has his moments of kitsch, in atmospherics and power his work recalls that of the famed Czech stage designer Josef Svoboda.

This being Wagner, the singers have to carry the bulk of the workload, and that was the weakest link of the May 20 premiere. German soprano Maida Hundeling, who was to sing Isolde, dropped out late in the rehearsals, and her opening-night replacement, Swiss singer Marion Ammann, gave an earnest if unmemorable performance. Mariinsky Theatre stalwart Leonid Zakhozhaev showed incredible stamina as Tristan, an exhausting role that may have helped kill the first person who ever sang it, Munich tenor Ludwig Schnorr. But both of the leads often could not be heard above the orchestra. The strongest voices of the evening belonged to American soprano Amber Wagner as Isolde's lady-in-waiting Brangäne, and Polish baritone Tomasz Konieczny as Tristan's friend Kurwenal, both of whom deservedly drew the strongest applause.

But the real star of the evening was the State Opera Orchestra, which has never sounded more impressive. Under the baton of British conductor Jan Latham-Koenig, the orchestra played with unusual depth and great sonority, driving the drama. The orchestra has its own voice in Tristan, and, if anything, that voice was perhaps too fully realized; at times, it seemed like the rest of the production was struggling to keep up. Striking a balance between the orchestra and the singers was also a recurring problem. But, as an authoritative rendering of Wagner, the music was outstanding.

Like most Wagner operas, Tristan also requires great stamina on the part of the audience; it's four and a half hours long, including two 30-minute intermissions. So this production is not for the casual opera-goer. But if you are a Wagner fan, it's a must-see, especially with noted Wagnerian singer Elizabeth Connell scheduled to sing Isolde May 27 and June 1. Run, don't walk, to get tickets for those performances.

Frank Kuznik can be reached at
fkuznik@praguepost.com