Word: tristan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Berger, Ludwig never consults a plan, hectors an architect or drives a construction foreman crazy. Visconti doesn't even make anything humanly or dramatically interesting out of Ludwig's other major project-rescuing Richard Wagner (Trevor Howard) from his debts and subsidizing the première of Tristan and the beginning of work on the Ring Cycle. Such activities imply a mysterious will and energy that cries out for interpretive speculation; but this would interfere with Visconti's simple view of Ludwig as a moony homosexual victim of his era's political and intellectual climate...
...Wagner, Tristan und Isolde (Tenor Jon Vickers, Soprano Helga Dernesch, Soprano Christa Ludwig, Baritone Walter Berry, Berlin Philharmonic, Herbert von Karajan conducting; Angel, 5 LPs, $29.90). What a cast of performers! What a disappointment! Given Karajan's past flair for Wagner, not to mention stalwart Tenor Vickers as Tristan, this could well have been, the stereo statement of Wagner's endless paean to adultery. Instead, it is merely a smooth, workmanlike job, hampered by Dernesch's inability to make Isolde alive enough so that her death is significant. The record is also marred by the cavernous, "first...
...fourth and final movement seemed dedicated to Wagner - first the somber three-note motif from the Ring cycle, then a bare but undisguised hint of love theme from Tristan und Isolde...
Richard Wagner was determined to make a name for himself in Paris. So when the Paris Opéra rejected his latest work, Tristan und Isolde, Wagner dusted off his Tannhäuser, which had been produced in Dresden 16 years earlier, and Frenchified it. He wrote new music for a ballet in the first scene and reworked the character and music of the love goddess Venus in his best chromatic, post-Tristan style...
Conductor Erich Leinsdorf, returning to the Met after a ten-year absence, leads a performance that surges excitingly, especially when Soprano Nilsson pours forth oceans of brilliant sound. Tenor Thomas does not give the world the Tristan that it has lacked since Lauritz Melchior retired in 1950. He looks romantic, but is overwhelmed by Wagner's demands. Still, thanks to Leinsdorf and the unique Nilsson, there are moments when one can forget that this new Tristan looks like an astronomy lecture with visual aids from Hallmark...