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SEEN AND HEARD UK OPERA REVIEW

Wagner, Tristan und Isolde -  Birmingham Performance: (Semi-staged with video projections) Soloists, Philharmonia Voices, The Philharmonia Orchestra, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, Symphony Hall, Birmingham, 23.9.2010 (BK)
 

Cast
Tristan – Gary Lehmann
Isolde – Violeta Urmana
Brangäne – Anne Sofie von Otter
King Marke – Matthew Best
Kurwenal  – Jukka Rasilainen
Melot – Stephen Gadd
Shepherd/Sailor – Joshua Ellicott
Helmsman  – Darren Jeffery
Philharmonia Voices

Production
Video Art  – The Bill Viola Studio  in association with the National Opera, Paris; the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts and the James Cohan Gallery, New York; Haunch of Venison, London
Direction / Artistic Collaboration - Peter Sellars



Tristan (Gary Lehmann)   and Isolde (Violeta Urmana)
 
Photo © Ben Ealovega - Video Projection © The Bill Viola Studio


Esa-Pekka Salonen's Tristan project was launched in Paris in 2005 and had subsequent outings in New York and Los Angeles. Five years later,  to fulfill Salonen's ambition to bring it to London, the production arrived in Birmingham prior to a performance in the Royal Festival Hall the following Sunday. (See review by Gavin Dixon here.) As perhaps the most complex concert ever staged by Symphony Hall it was nothing less than a musical triumph.

Nominally semi-staged - though in fact the only 'prop' to be seen was a small black box for the principals to sit on from time to time, or for Tristan to lie on in Act III -  the production had two very interesting elements. Director Peter Sellars had the idea of using the whole of Symphony Hall as a performance space, with the excellent Philharmonia Voices perched in the upper balcony above and behind most of the audience and with some soloists singing from the hall's circle tier. The resulting surround sound was simply stunning.

Bill Viola's video projections were the other innovation. A large screen hanging behind the orchestra showed a silent commentary on the characters' inner emotions as a complement to their behaviour 'on stage'. While many of the images were beautiful and compelling, structured as  themes reflecting the spiritual nature of human love in different guises for each act, others were unfortunately little better than distracting clichés, often so literal as to border on unintended comedy or curiously reminiscent of iconic moments in popular film. The man and the woman who appeared in many of them were shown for example drowning in 'tides of passion' (see illustration above) and at one point the man literally 'walked through fire' for the woman. The greatest problem with the images however was that they often moved at a different pace to the music with the effect that more attention was focussed on them, at least in my case,  than on what the singers and orchestra were doing. The final image, Tristan's lifeless body floating slowly upwards from the seabed, was shown during Violeta Urmana's  Liebestod  and was so distracting that I caught myself not listening to her for several minutes; a great pity, since her performance was truly exceptional.
 
In fact all of the principals were remarkable, at least as fine -  and often rather better  - than any other cast for Tristan that I can remember. Gary Lehmann is that rare creature the  true heldentenor, a little underpowered here and there perhaps but in excellent voice for the whole performance and with plenty of control and heft  left to him in Wagner's punishing third act. Ms Urmana too was in marvellous form,singing a role which seems ideally suited to her voice - particularly in her truly beautiful lower register.

The rest of the cast was uniformly splendid  too  - there is no other word for them -  with Anne Sofie von Otter both singing and acting the part of the pivotal Brangäne with a profound understanding, mirrored by Jukka Rasilainen's Kurwenal sung with great sympathy in an apparently limitless bass-baritone. Matthew Best's vocally imposing King Marke was also a  noble and dignified portrayal and Joshua Ellicot, Darren Jeffery and Stephen Gadd completed the cast with outstanding quality in their minor roles.
 
The last word naturally goes to Esa-Pekka Salonen's musical direction. Though not known as an established Wagnerian as yet, Salonen's reading was clearly extremely carefully considered, never once lapsing into anything remotely like the near-hysteria that lesser conductors can unwittingly unleash on this score. The music's few orchestral climaxes  were beautifully managed but the real hallmark of this performance was a sustained yet carefully understated drama which developed into something that compelled the closest attention from start to finish.  The Philharmonia gave Mr Salonen their very best, no more than we might expect from them perhaps, but even so the orchestra's contribution was an essential ingredient in a truly  memorable evening.  On reflection, this just might be the finest Tristan I have ever heard.

Bill Kenny

 

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