Tristan und Isolde

Eun Sun Kim
San Francisco Opera Chorus and Orchestra
Date/Location
27 October 2024
War Memorial Opera House San Francisco
Recording Type
  live  studio
  live compilation  live and studio
Cast
TristanSimon O’Neill
IsoldeAnja Kamppe
BrangäneAnnika Schlicht
KurwenalWolfgang Koch
König MarkeKwangchul Youn
MelotThomas Kinch
Ein junger SeemannChristopher Oglesby
Ein HirtChristopher Oglesby
SteuermannSamuel Kidd
Stage directorPaul Curran (2024)
Set designerRobert Innes Hopkins
TV directorFrank Zamacona
Gallery
Reviews
Opera Today

In the 1870’s Richard Wagner built a special theater for his operas, a theater where the words of his poems might flow clearly from the stage into the hall. One hundred years later supertitles came into being, quickly making Wagner’s dream of reviving Greek tragedy a reality —supertitles actually allow intoned words to be understood, not to be simply felt.

While Wagner’s Bayreuth Festival famously indulges itself in the latest dramaturgical trends it does not avail itself of this more recent development. Supertitles, it should be argued, are critical to the appreciation of Wagner’s poems, surely the bedrock of his theater. Thus the Festspielhaus audiences at the splendid new Bayreuth Tristan this past summer were deprived of the intricacies, the complexities, and the subtleties of Wagner’s quite magnificent poem.

But not we San Franciscans who just now participated word-for-word in San Francisco Opera’s splendid account of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, a work reputed to be the operatic apotheosis of Romanticism. Conductor Eun Sun Kim assumed the production’s rhetorical stance in the un-staged overture. Avoiding a musical sweep, she carefully stated the famed initial, questioning chord, insisted on the overture’s intricate phrasing, then steadily built to the opera’s strategically recurrent mordent (note above, note, note below, note) that is Tristan and Isolde’s chain link of connection (lead photo). And finally, with Wagner, let it disappear into the unfolding tragedy.

The poem is a masterfully constructed opera libretto within the Wagnerian poetic. It is a treatise on the fatality of love and the philosophical impossibility of its fulfillment, told by contrasting light with darkness, day with night, this thesis expounded not without the complications of human loyalties. Obviously Tristan is not the same opera it was at its premiere one hundred fifty years ago, having since been subjected to the critical analyses accorded such masterpieces.

Scottish stage director Paul Curran however did not burden his production with any overriding critical concept, or any concept at all for that matter, allowing the words of his actors to determine where, how and when they moved, like in a sort of real life naturalism. Mr. Curran always placed his actors across the front of the stage facing us, where they sang Wagner’s poem exactly as it was projected on a screen just above the stage. It was much like a semi-staged opera.

The physical production, by British designer Robert Innes Hopkins, came from Venice’s Teatro La Fenice where it was previously staged by Mr. Curran. It consisted of two, rather small reversible wall units, a wooden trellis, a tree and a chair (at a cost of maybe 20 cents in operatic dollars). The lighting, by U.S. designer David Martin Jacques, was crudely effected.

Thus the production, or lack of, left Wagner’s masterpiece to Maestro Kim and the San Francisco Opera orchestra who rose magnificently to the occasion with the maestra’s usual vivid presence, the sound at one with the words that flowed clearly and easily from the stage. Orchestrally it was a measured, precise reading of Wagner’s meticulously nuanced score that could have seemed stolidly procedural had we not carefully followed the words of the poem. As it was we were totally immersed in Wagner’s complex, timeless, awesome gesamtkunstwerk soundscapes.

The exemplary cast as well rose to the occasion. Tristan was sung by New Zealand tenor Simon O’Neill, a singer whose voice exhibits a character tenor sound to current ears, but a sound that evokes the storied Tristans of San Francisco Opera’s earlier eras, notably Wolfgang Windgassen in 1970. Mr. O’Neill has solid technique that he employed to maximum effect in his Act III soliloquy, electrifying in its nuanced delivery, carefully paced by the maestra to find its two shattering conclusions.

Isolde was sung by German soprano Anja Kampe who looks very much the Irish maid of the Tristan legend. Mme. Kampe is a recognized Isolde having performed the role on the major German stages, though in this production she did not find the heroic and philosophic stature usually ascribed to Isolde. Never losing her beautifully focused, truly heroic tone she remained a solidly voiced heroine through her movingly straightforward “Liebestod” — though she skipped over Wagner’s final mordent as she soared to her long awaited union with Tristan.

Marke was sung by Korean bass Kwangchul Youn. Miscast last spring as Zarastro in The Magic Flute, he now shone with black voiced authority, exuding his profound suffering at Tristan’s betrayal. His famed Act II soliloquy was solemnly stated, without overt art song affect, the beat of his voice echoing his heavy heart as the scene was perfectly paced by the maestra. At the end of the opera he fully embodied the humanity that mourned the Romantic tragedy of the lovers.

Brangäne was sung by German mezzo soprano Annika Schlicht. Of similar bright voice to Isolde she was as much Isolde’s alter-ego as she was Isolde’s maid. The opera’s opening scene was the sparring of two shöne madchen in this production’s demystification of the Tristan legend, not a scene of an interior, personal, philosophic, heroic battle.

Kurvenal was sung by Austrian baritone Wolfgang Koch. Mr. Koch is of a quite beautiful, Italianate voice belying his scruffy persona in this production. The role was greatly diminished from its often heroic display of unwavering fealty. Of note was the offstage voice of the sailer’s song that opens the opera, sung by former Adler Christopher Oglesby (though he was on-stage). As well Mr. Oglesby made great impression as Act III’s on-stage shepherd who mimed playing Wagner’s exquisite English horn solo. Melot was sung by Adler Fellow Thomas Kinch.

Michael Milenski | War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, October 25, 2024

Gramophone

An extraordinary thing is underway at San Francisco Opera: by taking on one of the major works of the wizard of Bayreuth each season, music director Eun Sun Kim has set about establishing herself as a formidable young Wagnerian. It was only last year that she embarked on her first Wagner production in San Francisco with Lohengrin (an achievement chronicled by the new documentary Eun Sun Kim: A Journey into Lohengrin). In the company’s recent announcement that Kim’s contract has been extended through 2031, reference was made to plans for a new Ring cycle ‘in a future season’.

Meanwhile, SFO’s new Tristan und Isolde is generating a wave of euphoria – just one month after the season’s auspicious start with an impressive Ballo in maschera (the latest in Kim’s parallel venture to conduct a major Verdi opera each season alongside Wagner). This return of Wagner’s inexhaustible opera to the War Memorial Opera House for the first time in 18 years will undoubtedly be recalled as a high-water mark.

A good deal of the credit goes to Kim and the SFO musicians for their success in establishing the transportive sound world Wagner demands – along with his drastic transitions in atmosphere for each of the opera’s three acts – with unflagging intensity, focus and intentionality.

This is Kim’s first outing with Tristan, yet her devotion to the score yielded a ravishing transparency of detail and colour, always in sync with the deepest layers of Wagner’s soul drama. In the performance I attended (the second of the run), she showed a preternatural grasp of Wagner’s structuring of time that made sense of the shift from nervous anticipation to a zone beyond counting in the second act and that was at its most compelling in the dark night through which Tristan ventures in the third.

A deep respect n for the sheer beauty or alienness of Wagner’s sonic pictures emerged. Kim shaped stretches of the love duet as quasi-Italianate cantilena, while the gradually thinning string textures in the prelude to the third act have rarely sounded so desolate. Timbral and spatial details registered with maximal impact. SFO even supplied a bona fide wooden trumpet to execute the shepherd’s joyful signalling.

The production boasts an excellent cast as well. Covering many shades of outrage, passion and legato warmth, Anja Kampe embodied the stages of Isolde’s transformation, revealing her capacity for compassion already in her first act recollection of her healing of ‘Tantris’. Simon O’Neill left an even greater impression through his multifaceted portrayal of Tristan. Not only an impassioned lover who produced unusual variety (and beauty) of tone, he conveyed silent sorrow over his betrayal of King Marke and was at his most searing in the ecstatic agonies of his visions in the third act (sung without cuts, his vocal power never dimming).

Singing with weighty vibrato, Kwangchul Youn was a moving King Marke whose desire to understand shifted the drama into an unexpected direction. Annika Schlicht lofted Brangäne’s futile warnings with soul-stirring poignancy. As Kurwenal, Wolfgang Koch revealed a pained tenderness while attending the stricken Tristan. Thomas Kinch presented a physically and vocally imposing Melot. As the Sailor and later Shepherd, Christopher Oglesby suggested the naive innocence of an Everyperson incapable of grasping the transcendent torments driving the lovers.

Paul Curran’s production (first seen in 2012 at La Fenice) featured nuanced interactions and stage movement but interpolated distractingly naturalistic gestures to fill the stage time. Robert Innes Hopkins designed large, windowed panels outlining the ship’s interior in the first act, which were reversed to create castle walls surrounding a courtyard in the second and then suspended in a ruined state for Tristan’s castle in the third. His dreary sets and unvaried costumes benefited from the subtle lighting scheme of David Martin Jacques.

But with musical and dramatic values so firmly in place, Wagner’s ‘deeds of music’ became strikingly visible.

Thomas May | October 28, 2024

seenandheard-international.com

Magnificent orchestral work under Eun Sun Kim elevates SFO’s Tristan und Isolde

From the very first notes, what emerged from the orchestra pit for Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde was, appropriately, transcendent. In Wednesday’s second performance of five at San Francisco Opera, music director Eun Sun Kim led with care, intelligence and incandescent clarity to bring out all the nuances of the score. It was her first go at conducting this massive work, but the results were revelatory. Phrases took shape, dynamics fell into place, and tempos quickened and subsided naturally to create the overwhelming sense of yearning that infuses the music. The prelude emerged from a whisper, and pauses felt tentative. The ‘Tristan chord’ asked its question and hung in the air. The music gained momentum slowly, surging and ebbing, foreshadowing the character of the whole 4plus hours of the opera.

The glory of the opera, its music, was the vehicle that made the sometimes great, sometimes spotty singing and a less-than-incisive production come together in an unforgettable performance. The other preludes similarly laid the groundwork for what was to come with uncanny presence. The spooky scene-setting of Act II, with its surging chords interrupted by the sounds of distant hunting horns, worked its magic to bring extra tingling to the entire act. The slow-moving opening of Act III swelled lugubriously to set up what turned out to be the most glorious scene in the whole production (and it was not the Liebestod).

Plenty of individual efforts punctuated the orchestral glories, including several offstage moments, among them John Pearson’s solo in Act III on Holtztrompete (a wooden trumpet with brass mouthpiece and bell) and Benjamin Brogadir’s plangent cor anglais in the Act III shepherd’s songs. The horns galloped wonderfully offstage in Act II hunt music, and the echoes of the same calls from the pit hit just the right tone.

The best thing to say in favor of director Paul Curran’s staging, first seen at Venice’s Teatro La Fenice in 2012, was that it did not get in the way of the music. The set consists of two gigantic, curved walls that fit together in Act I to be the hull of an oversized ship, and turn to become convex for the garden in Act II. For some reason, they hung in midair to define Tristan’s castle in Act III. The pieces had the advantage, in all cases, of projecting the singers’ voices.

Interactions among the cast were more active than often seen in this opera, and especially good in moments of confrontation. On the other hand, the central moment of the opera – the title characters’ passionate tryst – fell flat visually as the singers barely held hands under a leaning, silvery tree.

The sets put the spotlight on the singers, and soprano Anja Kempe (last seen at San Francisco Opera as a remarkably agile Sieglinde in the 2012 Ring) had her best moments in the love duet. Her voice caressed the music with fluid softness, a trait overshadowed in other scenes by squally high notes and generally loud singing (which was unnecessary – Kim had the orchestra perfectly balanced to let the vocal lines shine). In her acting, Kempe made Isolde a temperamental Irish princess, revealing every pent-up frustration in Act I with Tristan, the hero who defeated her fiancé in battle only to be nursed back to health by her ministrations. He now brings her to Cornwall to be wed to the king.

The glory of the cast was Simon O’Neill’s Tristan. In this punishing role, his clarion tenor, all polished steel and glistening neon, rose to the occasion again and again. He never flagged, never seemed to be holding back, his vocal richness gaining extra depth and power with each succeeding scene. We could feel the inner thrills in the moment in Act I when a love potion has finally pushed the title characters to reach for one another (literally, in this staging, as they crawled slowly to come together as the music climbed to a climax).

O’Neill found a welcome liquidity in the Act II love duet, but the triumph of the evening came in Act III. His ability to act with his voice, his face and his body combined to make Tristan’s long scene of agony come to life. It shook me to the bones. Having been stabbed by his accuser at the end of Act II (after being caught kissing Isolde), he can barely rise from his blood-stained chair. Increasingly agitated at the possibility of Isolde returning, O’Neill gave voice to the character’s madness, rising hopes and hallucinations, with thrilling accuracy and a wealth of colors. It was staggering theater.

It is not often that anything can upstage Isolde’s Liebestod, which brings the opera to a close with some of Wagner’s most unforgettable music. On this evening, Kempe chose to sing much of it loudly, bleating some notes when a soft, beautiful line would have been safer and more appropriate. The orchestra, however, savored the music’s cohesiveness and yearning harmonies, finally resolving with satisfying richness in the final measures.

Among the vocal standouts in the rest of the cast, Annika Schlicht as Brangäne (Isolde’s servant and companion) fielded a resonant and fluid mezzo-soprano, her steadiness playing against Kempe’s impetuousness. Making her U.S. opera debut, she floated mellifluous warnings beside the Act II tryst. Baritone Wolfgang Koch, in his company debut, brought the most beautiful voice in the cast to Kurwenal (Tristan’s devoted attendant). His singing melded with O’Neill’s brilliantly in Act III.

As King Marke, bass Kwangchul Youn (recently Sarastro in last season’s The Magic Flute) made the most of his long Act III speech, begging forgiveness from Tristan whose lifeless body lay at his feet. He infused the music with more warmth and definition than we usually hear. Current and recent Adler Fellow tenors delivered small but colorful roles with flair: Christopher Oglesby’s refreshing directness animated the Act I sailor song, and Thomas Kinch’s haughty presence informed Melot’s brief part as the courtier who outs the lovers.

Harvey Steiman | 26/10/2024

operawire.com

Anja Kampe, Simon O’Neill & Eun Sun Kim Lead a Musical Tale Beyond the Imagination

Whether you view Richard Wagner’s opera, “Tristan und Isolde,” as an expressive tale of universal human redemption or simply a unique take on the many medieval romances of love and death, there is no question it casts a spell. In the opening of San Francisco’s new production by Paul Curran, conducted by San Francisco’s own Eun Sun Kim, with the San Francisco Opera Orchestra of 72 , both in the pit and backstage, the magic of the spell did not come until Act two, after being initiated by the last moments of Act one, when Tristan and Isolde drank the potion. Up until then, we were pinioned in an extended conversation between two women and between two men about important, but only partially disclosed, issues. Eun Sun Kim pressed the pace and drove it as a dramatic, on-earth type of story. But as Isolde and Tristan sailed from the day-light conversation into their night dream world of love that magic was cast, and it was uplifting to move from the lovers and their personal attendants, to a realm both beauteous and filled with promise. At this point, we truly settled into our seats.

Anja Kampe as Isolde Gives Extraordinary Performance
German soprano Anja Kampe sang Isolde. She came on as a would-be liberated woman from the first, although dressed like a refugee sitting on a cargo box in the belly of the big ship. Was that indeed the extraordinary Irish princess courted by Tristan for King Marke? As the scene began to unfold, however, she revealed that she was the bridal reward to King Marke. She was angry over it, frustrated, confined. “Luft, luft./Mir estick das Herz/ Air, air. (Oh, my heart constricts). Offne! Offne!dort weit! (Open, open, there, wide).” She could not breathe while being so constrained. Her early words revealed anger, frustration, intolerance. She strode across the stage like an Amazonian princess. She raised her right arm over and over as if to strike someone for contributing to this. She sang with sharp tones, with bite. She almost shouted revealing that she’d even use her mother, a once-upon-a-time sorceress’s potions to kill the culprit who led her to this fate. Kampe’s Isolde clearly would not stay in thrall. She willed to extricate herself, from Act one until the Finale, from a world in which women didn’t count. In Act two, when she sang of her passionate love for Tristan she continued to disclose this commitment, though now singing with love-struck ardor, full-bodied resonance and “geist,” spirit, if sometimes with a jolting vocal attack. By Act three, she became a grand Isolde, even standing over Tristan’s dead body rather than collapsing into it. She’d pushed Brangaene, she’d pushed Tristan, she’d pushed her prescribed fate. Clearly, it was her opera.

Heldentenor Simon O’Neill as Tristan Goes Beyond the Imagination
Tristan, sung by well-known heldentenor, New Zealander Simon O’Neill, took time to commit himself both vocally and dramatically. He confined his early singing to a small circumference, at moments, even hollow. Looking upward then at Isolde and keeping his actions distinct from her demands, he also kept the reins on his vocal power. As he committed to her, he sang with more range, expanding from a more introverted expression to ecstatic. By Act three, when he wrestled with his hallucinations of the any-minute-to-arrive Isolde, to heal him, to hold him, to let him creep into her being, some way, somehow, and then die, he shone. When he grasped the water bottle, the same time he was grasping thin air, it was as if he were grasping for life itself. His whole body rose and fell with the weight of conviction. O’Neill entered his own world here, the horns repeating their motif four times, and left even Isolde’s world as he fell into her eager arms, as he died. He was no longer in misery; it seemed as if he left his suffering and yearning behind, which was the message of the opera itself – not simply the love between the two, but the platform from which he, and ultimately, she, could go beyond it. Following the through-line of their devotion, we found ourselves moving past it, and transfixed as the curtain fell. A spell? In this production, a liberated choice.

More Cast Highlights
Brangaene was sung by Annika Schlicht, in her San Francisco debut, with rich, round tones, if overly-hooded at the outset, and difficult to understand. Throughout she tried to tame Isolde, and get her in line with a more “conventional” behavior, girlish infatuation aside. She sang with increasing clarion and commitment when it became a question of her loyalty and to Isolde and finally her grief.

Kurwenal, German baritone Wolfgang Koch, making his San Francisco Opera debut, remained close, hovering even, intimate, actively loving and devoted, thus embodying his loyalty.

Marke, sung by bass Kwangchul Youn, conveyed his judgment in a steely vocal and postural fashion, only granting the lovers pardon after he learned about the potion. Sympathy even then seemed verbal rather than visceral. Melot was sung richly by Thomas Kinch, both the Sailor and the Shepherd sung by Christopher Oglesby, whose choice for a piano version of the well-known “meine Irisch Kind” seemed a bit too soft, and the Steersman sung by Samuel Kidd, all making their San Francisco debuts. The sailor chorus, sung from offstage, was rousing and a jolt out of the dreamy, langorious world we had settled into.

Notable Production Details
Other notable things about the production included Robert Innes Hopkins‘s stage design, including the ship in its interstices with its strong sense of enclosure and its opening split on their arrival in Cornwall, Marke standing at apex. That was indeed effective. The lit-up potion box seemed garish and melodramatic, particularly since the sorcery theme was not more than verbally developed. So too, the courtyard tree, a foreshadowing of “Parsifal” but in this case adding nothing to the similar sense of personal realization. The sudden termination of the lights when the lovers drank the potion spoiled the dramatic possibility of seeing the lovers turn from the ordinary to the more transformed beings. The stage formations were effective, stately, in the Greek tradition. They helped us follow the story with ease, especially after Act one.

Eun Sun Kim conducted the monumental score for the first time with energetic control. She never lapsed into melodramatic moments, spinning out legato for its own sake. Further, she handsomely highlighted the many instrumental contrasts, harp and horns, strings and bassoon, the trumpet and the oboes, thereby strengthening the complexities of idea, mood, psychologically shifting intimacies. The marriage of the text and the music here as always when heard is remarkable. The tender and simple shepherd sounds were deeply moving. Kim brought the sense of yearning that pervaded the whole performance alive – the yearning for arrival, yearning for love, yearning for death. The horn solo at the beginning of Act three marked it particularly well. Haunting, melancholy, yoking the sophisticated world of nobles and knights with the ordinary peasant world, it helped to emphasize Wagner’s idea of how human beings are connected in matters of love and death. The whole piece, the extraordinary music above all, from Prelude to Finale, rich with leitmotifs working not only for their ingenious harmonies but for such a thematic statement whether we fight, love, badger, battle, hate, or die. Life’s fabric was invincible, the whole work transmitted, and a perception that experiences it otherwise literally misses out. Love between Tristan and Isolde, Kurwenal and Tristan, Marke and Tristan, Brangaene and Isolde accentuated the point. Even the suffering portrayed the production Wagner claimed was the suffering beyond that world-view.

As the curtain fell, reluctantly, we moved back to the streets of San Francisco, which, however melancholy, savored of the mystery of the lost and the eternal. “Doch unsre Liebe,/heisst sie nicht Tristan und – Isolde?/Dies süsse Wörtlein: und,/was es bindet,/der Liebe Bund,/wenn Tristan stürb,/zerstört’ es nicht der Tod? …(But our love,/is it not Tristan/and Isolde?/This sweet little word: and,/would death not destroy/the bonds of love/which it entwines/if we, [sic] were to die?)” The answer is no, for we left the opera house with those words and that lustrous music lingering in us, more than alive.

Lois Silverstein | Oct 23, 2024

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