I couldn’t let the day go by without noting that tomorrow’s Metropolitan Opera broadcast will feature the new Met production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, featuring Lise Davidsen and Michael Spyres; Yuval Sharon directs and Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts. You can stream this via Philadelphia’s WRTI tomorrow afternoon, March 21, at 12:00 noon Eastern time.
The New York Times‘ Josh Barone was enthusiastic about the new production earlier this month — “the event of the season,” he says (gift link to his review here) — and it will undoubtedly be worth the time. Davidsen is reputed to be nothing less than miraculous (director Sharon has given her a baby in this one; I’m thinking I’ll be glad to listen and not sorry to miss the visuals), and Nézet-Séguin conducted a terrific in-concert version with Nina Stimme last season. I confess I’m somewhat skeptical of director-centric productions by the likes of Sharon; on the other hand, I was spellbound by the Chereau Ring at Bayreuth and recently very much enjoyed Barrie Kosky’s Don Giovanni for the Vienna opera. The little I’ve read of Sharon’s A New Philosophy of Opera is intriguing and tempts me to read further — what do I know? Still, a baby?
Event of the season or not, Tristan is one of the great achievements of the aesthetic imagination, an extraordinarily erotic and meditative work, Schopenhauer as music. Listen, and before a second listening read Bryan Magee’s The Tristan Chord.