fyglia

Glyndebourne's celebrated production of Nikolaus Lehnhoff's Tristan und Isolde is gravely beautiful, haunting and meditative. Nina Stemme's Isolde and Robert Gambill's Tristan are matched by a superb performancce from Rene Pape.



CAST
Tristan – Robert Gambill
Isolde – Nina Stemme
Brangäne – Katarina Karnéus
Kruwenal – Bo Skovhus
King Marke – René Pape
Melot – Stephen Gadd
Young Sailor / Shepherd – Timothy Robinson
Steersman – Richard Mosley-Evans

The Glyndebourne Chorus
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Jirí Belohlávek, conductor

Nikolaus Lehnhoff, stage director

REVIEW
FANFARE: Andrew Quint

& Film: “Do I hear the light” - Trimborn discusses Tristan

With the initial phrase of the first act Vorspiel of this Nikolaus Lehnhoff-directed Glyndebourne production, there appears in the middle of a jet-black screen a thin white line. Over the next 11 minutes, that line moves slowly, inexorably toward the viewer, revealing itself to be the words TRISTAN UND ISOLDE in a bold white typeface. It’s a perfect summation of the title characters’ perspective: all they need in this world, and the next, is each other. As the story progresses, external reality—the tumult caused by their actions—becomes less and less important. For the first several minutes of Marke’s act II speech, they just keep looking deeply into each other’s eyes.

I reviewed this 2007 performance’s DVD incarnation in Fanfare 31:6, and it remains my favorite video Tristan , preferred over those conducted by Barenboim, Levine, de Billy, and Armin Jordan. (Yes, I have the 1973 performance with Nilsson and Vickers on a Kultur DVD, but find it a real chore to watch because of the poor audio and video quality.) Check out a detailed account of the Opus Arte’s virtues in an old copy of the magazine or Fanfare ’s online Archive. But I will repeat here that Nina Stemme is an outstanding princess, as she was with Plácido Domingo for his EMI studio recording of a few years ago. Stemme’s singing is warm, full, and secure throughout her range, and her representation of the character is consistent for the entire drama. Isolde’s the same gal before and after opera’s most celebrated medication error: her vitriolic condemnation of Tristan has no more intensity than her subsequent passionate declarations. Tristan isn’t Robert Gambill’s best Wagner role—he’s a superb Tannhäuser (see review elsewhere) and Siegmund—but the American tenor never sounds to be struggling, and truly shines when he’s onstage with Stemme. “So starben wir, um ungetrennt,” the culmination of act II’s love duet, is a wonder. We are utterly convinced that, for this couple at least, death is the way to go. It makes perfect sense that they seem exultant at the arrival of Marke and Melot; this development, they know, only gets them closer to their ultimate shared goal.

Blu-ray’s high-resolution picture serves the minimalist sets well, with crisp delineation of the sharp lines of the production’s design. A subtlety of the costume design more apparent on BD is that, for act I, Brangäne and Kurwenal are dressed in colors that are slightly paler hues of what their respective masters are wearing. It’s as if these two are not quite a part of the protagonists’ reality—they participate in the action, of course, yet at a distance removed from the lovers’ world. The sound, Dolby TrueHD for both stereo and surround, is quite good, with the off-stage horns at the outset of act II convincingly distant, especially with the 5.0 multichannel. One remarkable psychoacoustic phenomenon: with the TV mounted well above the front speakers of my audio system, voices seemed to emanate from the screen while the orchestra was lower down, localized to a virtual pit.

Opus Arte includes the same extras as with the standard DVD, including a 56-minute film entitled “Do I hear the light?” and a wide-ranging talk from the piano bench by Richard Trimborn, a German musicologist. The label gets everything on two Blu-ray discs as opposed to three regular DVDs, but the list price for both formats is the same.

Works on This Recording
Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner
Performer: Timothy Robinson (Tenor), Stephen Gadd (Bass), Katarina Karnéus (Mezzo Soprano), Nina Stemme (Soprano), René Pape (Bass), Robert Gambill (Tenor), Bo Skovhus (Baritone)
Conductor: Jiri Belohlávek
Orchestra/Ensemble: London Philharmonic Orchestra, Glyndebourne Chorus
Period: Romantic
Written: 1857-1859; Germany
Date of Recording: 2007
Venue: Glyndebourne, Lewes, Sussex