Word: wieland
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...famous recent productions of Die Meistersinger-the one mounted by Wieland Wagner in Bayreuth in 1956-the tendency was to reduce realistic sets to a minimum. Last week's resplendent production,* with sets and costumes by Designer Robert O'Hearn, took a different tack-and was far more successful. The soaring stone columns and arches of St. Catherine's Church in Act I looked enduringly solid-a far cry from the standard productions in which they tend to flap and billow like a clothesline of wet wash. The steeply gabled gingerbread houses of Nürnberg...
Death & Transfiguration. How did Wieland justify his changes? "If you read the original score," says he, "you will see that Richard Wagner never mentions Isolde's death, but always speaks about her Verärung (transfiguration). Death for Richard Wagner was never mere loss of life...
...meant a breakthrough to transfiguration. Isolde is experiencing a unity with the eternal night, which returns her to Tristan." And King Marke turning into Tristan's father? That came about, says Wieland, partly through archaeological research, partly from evidence in the opera itself. Scholars have discovered what they believe is Tristan's grave in southern Cornwall-and the inscription on the gravestone identifies the young lover as the son of the man historians believe to have been the historical King Marke...
While the operatic Tristan blames himself for the sufferings he inflicted on his parents, the orchestra plays the theme associated with King Marke. Wieland thinks that Grandfather Richard must have sensed intuitively what medieval prudes (who presumably altered the saga) could not stomach: the lust of father and son for the same woman...
...critics bought this Freudian analysis. But most agreed that Grandson Wieland had achieved as fine, and as gripping, a performance of Tristan as the modern opera stage has offered-although not a single fraulein collapsed in the aisles...