Fabulous version with legendary Meier along with Siegfried Jerusalem. as Tristan. They make the most physically convincing Tristan und Isolde couple. The conducting by Daniel Barenboim is particularly expressive; he holds on to every single climax and takes full advantage of them. The abstract settings focus our attention to the inner drama and superlative score.
Actually I like the circles in the necks, they are a kind of atemporal, cruel and majestic fetters. A reminder that nobody can scape ethics and social conventions.
Siegfried Jerusalem, Poul Elming, Falk Struckmann, Mathias Holle and Waltraud Meier........all on the same stage, and conducted by Daniel Barenboim. Wow :D
Superb cast and conducting. And for once the production doesn't mock or contradict the opera's story -- as happens so often in Eurotrash productions and increasingly, I'm sorry to say, in the States as well. The production is rather abstract but it supports the characters and story without detracting from it. Good touches, like the bottles of the two potions looking identical. Waltraud Meier's voice is a natural wonder and her acting is extraordinary for an opera star. Her Isolde is tough, angry, mournful, loving, tender, vengeful ... everything the part asks for and more. And the rest of the cast is great too. Barenboim's way with the score is both thoughtful and exciting. FIne all around.
This is just the best conducting, the best actors, but the staging.. In the love song in the second act they often aren't looking at one another. I think the best version is Barenboim's later one with Ian Storey and Waltraud Meier, but that one has some awful filming, it's like the camera is on a timer and must show something else every minute and with no noticeable preference for the singer. It makes one nervous, so I suppose this is still the better version, unless that one gets reedited, which would never happen.
Would you be so kind as to post a version with English subs? Love the production and I would really appreciate it, as well as my English-speaking cohort! Either way, thanks for the post!
I sat in the audience as an 18 year old and was literally burning of love while listening Waltraud Meier. I hardly could restrain myself from grabbing the young girl sitting next to me (I didn't know her at all). I was literally incinerated.
@@Siegfried5846 Wagner shouldn't have written the opera in the first place! How dared he who lived in the 19th century! (There was no such thing as a string orchestra, trombones, or english horns in Marie de France's time! Not to mention the concept of "unbewusst".) This composer's entire oeuvre is cultural appropriation and deserves nothing but cancellation.
Waltraud Meier wonderful of course! There's just this oddity which distracts so unnecessarily from the start as you cannot stop wondering what in the world they are there for. I mean the totally ridiculous hoops round the necks of the actors. Are you meant to think they are strange beings from another planet? Or did the producer fancy we would be effortlessly transported by them to ancient Ireland, Cornwall and Brittany? Am I the only one to see them as a bit of a silly distraction? Such a shame when everything else in this production is so good.
Meier's voice and power are not as perfect as a decade ago, but still brilliant. And I don't understand why Bayreuth's productions always add too many unnecessary, superficial decorations on the stage. Look at that strange circle around the singers' necks! Does it mean anything? Tristan und Isolde is one of the simplest story Wagner has ever written and this must be shown from the production in order to underscore the complexity of the music and spirit of this masterpiece.
My best guess is that the circles around their necks are supposed to represent their confinement (they exist within a cell sort of idea) due to the rules of feudal society which they escape through drinking the 'love/death potion' - hence the circles disappear. Totally agree though, looks ridiculous.
Another ill conceived production. The costuming seems designed to actually detract from and get in the way of the wonderful singers. If you like this, fine. For me, it is just another attempt to update what is timeless.
you have to update the timeless because modern people don't understand the timeless, they think their time is so progressive and so way ahead of the past
Great performances. Vapid sets and ugly costumes. I last attended the Bayreuth Festival in 1998 and 1999 and I have no desire to return, what with the largely mindless productions they continue to offer. Wagner would be appalled. I know I am!
Holy Lord! All those aureoles in the depictions of Jesus... Who did bring forth that crap??! F*** those corrupt painters Giotto, Fra Angelico, Lippi, Raphael and the epigones...
