Bayreuth
Radical error
David Mellor on Bayreuth's flawed new production of Tristan und Isolde Tristan und Isolde is perhaps the ulti- mate musical statement of the power of sensual love, some of its pages being amongst the most inspired ever composed. It is also a landmark in the development of music. As Wieland Wagner has written, it is 'the unchallenged summit and supreme crisis of Romantic music, and at the same time the gateway to the atonality of our own times'. It is perhaps inevitable that the opera should be fiendishly difficult to per- form. Wagner's reach did not exceed his grasp, and almost superhuman problems are posed to singers, conductors, players, directors and designers alike. Even at Bayreuth the last new production before this summer's adventure was in 1981, and there have been no performances there at all for almost a decade.
So it was with keen anticipation that most of us looked forward to Bayreuth's new production, with the principal roles being taken by two singers, Waltraud Meier and Siegfried Jerusalem, who had never tackled these parts before but whose Wagnerian credentials are already well established. Meier, as I wrote in these columns two years ago, is the finest Kundry for many years, while Jerusalem was an excellent Siegfried in Bayreuth's last Ring. He is without question an underrated artist, with a beauty of tone rare amongst Heldentenors. It was therefore not a bold move by Bayreuth's veteran intendant, Wolfgang Wagner, grandson of the com- poser and brother to the late-lamented Wieland, to engage these two, nor to sign up Daniel Barenboim, who was responsible for Bayreuth's last Tristan, as conductor.
What was courageous was to ask the East German writer Heiner Muller to direct. Milner had not only never had anything to do with Tristan, he had never before direct- ed an opera of any kind. But this is typical of Wolfgang. Though intensely conserva- tive in his own work as an opera producer (as witness his boring Parsifal and dire Tannhauser, both on display again this year), Wolfgang has always made a thing of commissioning radical productions from others. But he hasn't Wieland's genius for knowing how far you can go down the radi- cal road without fatally undermining the opera itself. So it was typical of Wolfgang the showman to go for Muller, and to pile Pelion upon Ossa by also engaging the avant-garde designer Erich Wonder, knowing that this would be the stuff of headlines. And it was: this Tristan has been the talk of musical Europe all summer. Eat your heart out, Salzburg, Wolfgang has trumped your ace.
But a high price has had to be paid. Tris- tan, as we have affirmed, is a great and complex masterpiece. It degrades the piece to imagine that someone with no experi- ence in opera could penetrate all its mys- teries, or even most of them, first time out. Muller failed, and since his failure was so predictable, Wolfgang should perhaps feel a tiny bit ashamed of himself.
Act I was promising. Wonder's spare designs well suggested the enclosed space of the ship, while the lighting, a strength of this production throughout, imaginatively assisted the build-up of the emotional tem- perature, culminating in a dramatic and impassioned conclusion to the Act, after the love-potion had been quaffed. Jeru- salem and Meier were in fine voice, with Meier seeming at this early stage to put to rest fears that her built-up mezzo voice could not sustain this most demanding of dramatic soprano roles.
Alas, in the following acts the production fell off a cliff into confusion and finally bathos. Act II of Tristan contains some of the most passionate music ever written. Meier and Jerusalem for the most part car- ried all before them, and there was a splen- didly sung King Marke from our own John Tomlinson. But Mailer suddenly seemed embarrassed by all the passion. He allowed the stage to be cluttered up with hundreds of what I am informed were breast-plates, perhaps signifying Tristan's military obses- sion which he was now setting aside for love. They looked to me more like lavatory pans, and the whole set exactly how one would imagine Doulton's warehouse to be. In this bizarre setting, Tristan and Isolde were encouraged to run around, almost completely ignoring each other, and allowed no physical contact, even during the music's most impassioned avowals.
This must be a famous first — the only production of Act II where Tristan and Isolde never seemed at any stage to like each other. Indeed, when King Marke burst in one longed for this to be a pan- tomime where audience participation was permitted. We could all have shouted out to the enraged monarch: 'Hang on a mo, they were only having a chat,' thereby sav- ing a good deal of the bloodshed to come.
But there was to be no stopping this show. Act III was simply ludicrous. Tristan sat amidst the rubble of a building-site, slumped in an armchair, sprayed grey all over. He and his two companions were dressed in dirty macs. Even the musical standards finally disintegrated in the Liebestod. This most sublime culmination to any opera has surely never before fallen so flat. Meier was encouraged to stand fac- ing the audience, ignoring the body of Tris-
tan, completely static in a silly dress, look- ing for all the world like a nervous school- girl singing a nursery rhyme at her school concert. Her voice finally gave out, making clear what had already begun to become apparent, namely that there has been a strong element of wish-fulfilment in the way some critics have talked her up as a great Isolde. Even Barenboim, whose con- ducting throughout had genuine passion and commitment, went awry here, pushing the music forward so that it seemed merely hectic and scrappy, rather than elemental.
This production is likely to remain in the Bayreuth repertory for a number of years. If it is to deserve its place there, Willer should be encouraged to tear up Acts H and III and try to build on the undoubted success of Act I. Only if that happens will Wolfgang's succes de scandale become a real success after all.
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