Word: tristan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...latest to try. Director August Everding and Designer Giinther Schneider-Siemssen, are no exception. Their new Tristan und Isolde, which opened at the Met last week, undoubtedly will provoke arguments for as long as the production runs. To some, it may be a bold realization of the poetry in Wagner's libretto. To others, it will seem more like the further adventures of Mary Poppins, German style...
...Tristan (Jess Thomas) and Isolde (Birgit Nilsson) down their love potion on the deck of a palpably realistic ship. Suddenly they are obscured by swirling clouds, as if seen through a delicatessen window on a cold day. Later, in a dense, lushly tropical garden, they embrace, then shoot skyward via an elevator. They float among color-slide-projected stars, perch on the solid-looking edge of a planet examining a literal representation of the sun's corona, finally end their galactic tour by strolling across what seems to be an asteroid before ending up again in their dank garden...
Hallmark Aids. Throughout, Everding has succeeded in projecting the lovers' desire for eternal night and their equation of day with destructive reality. Tristan dies in a bleak courtyard as the sun burns harshly through a sea mist. But Isolde's Liebestod brings on more aeronautics. Arms outstretched, she again appears in the firmament, looking for all the world like a "Peace on Earth" Christmas card...
...while, and enjoys the company of friends, his two children and his grandchildren. It sounds fulfilling, but a poignant passage from a personal journal several years ago suggests an underlying sadness: "Sun streams into our living room. My hi-fi is midway through the first act of Tristan and Isolde. A very pleasant environment. A man would be a fool not to enjoy himself in it. In a moment I will work on a manuscript which may help mankind. So my life is not only pleasant, it is earned or deserved. Yet, yet, I am unhappy...
...That was the reaction to the appointment from almost everybody, except Swedes, on the tight little island of international opera. As opera directors go, he is a virtual unknown whose work has been seen outside Europe only once. At Montreal's Expo 67, his company staged productions of Tristan, Ballo in Maschera and an Ingmar Bergman-directed Rake's Progress to excellent critical acclaim. In the guessing game that followed Bing's decision to retire, Gentele's name did not figure among the popular favorites: Conductors Leonard Bernstein and Erich Leinsdorf, Impresarios Julius Rudel...