Wagner: Tristan and Isolde

Wagner: Tristan and Isolde

Here is a musically competent performance of Tristan und Isolde, and a weird production. It’s most surprising that the Bayreuth management should have thought it suitable for such rapid publication, since it’s not an impressive demonstration of prevailing standards in the Mecca of Wagnerians.

Our rating

3

Michael Beek

Published: January 20, 2012 at 4:31 pm

COMPOSERS: Wagner
LABELS: Opus Arte
WORKS: Tristan and Isolde
PERFORMER: Robert Dean Smith, Iréne Theorin, Michelle Breedt, Robert Holl, Jukka Rasilainen, Ralf Lukas, Clemens Bieber, Arnold Bezuyen, Martin Snell; Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and Chorus/Peter Schneider; dir. Christoph Marthaler (Bayreuth, 2009)
CATALOGUE NO: OA 1033 D

Here is a musically competent performance of Tristan und Isolde, and a weird production. It’s most surprising that the Bayreuth management should have thought it suitable for such rapid publication, since it’s not an impressive demonstration of prevailing standards in the Mecca of Wagnerians.

Peter Schneider, who conducts, takes a broad view of the score. It’s so broad that in each of the acts the tension drains out of the performance, nowhere more so than in the first Act’s long and increasingly tense scene between the two lovers before they declare their love.

Isolde is sung by Iréne Theorin, who has the necessary power, but becomes shrill and constricted in her upper register. Robert Dean Smith holds his own as Tristan, which is quite a feat, but his voice is not beautiful, and he sings with only moderate expressiveness. The rest of the cast is decent, no more.

The production is set in the present, and glancing at it casually you might think you were looking at an episode of The Office. That is how everyone is dressed. Tristan and Isolde, inhibited characters lacking in social skills, sit on two stools side by side for their great duet in Act II, not looking at one another. Sometimes they make absurd, artificial gestures.

The best looking DVD of this opera is undoubtedly the one from Glyndebourne (on Opus Arte), and it is better conducted, but the duet has a 12-minute cut, where this one is complete. Michael Tanner

Michael Beek

Reviews Editor, BBC Music Magazine

Michael is the Reviews Editor of BBC Music Magazine. He looks after the 26 pages of recording and book reviews in the magazine each month, deciding what will be reviewed – no easy task with so much being sent in for consideration! Michael joined the team in 2018, following ten years as a freelance film music journalist and fifteen years at St George's Bristol. Film and television music is his favourite thing, and when he’s not listening to things to be reviewed in the mag, Michael loves nothing more than to listen to the music of John Williams and James Horner – his favourite film composers. He was the Editor of MusicfromtheMovies.com and has written for the BBC Proms, BBC Concert Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Albert Hall, Hollywood in Vienna and Silva Screen Records. His favourite writing gigs so far have been programmes for each of the Doctor Who Proms, soundtrack album notes for Doctor Who – Series 4 and Torchwood – Children of Earth, plus programmes and features for live concert screenings of Jurassic Park, Gladiator, Back to the Future and Raiders of the Lost Ark. While he never got the chance to interview the late James Horner, Michael was delighted to spend an hour on the phone with John Williams for the 2020 Christmas issue of BBC Music Magazine. Also a presenter, Michael has hosted concerts and live events for Bristol Film Festival and St George's Bristol, plus Debbie Wiseman's ‘Music and Words from Wolf Hall’ shows at venues across the UK. Michael has worked regularly with Debbie Wiseman over the years, writing concert programmes and scripts (for Terry Wogan and Simon Bates) and producing her 2011 album Piano Stories.
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