Tristan and the giant video

by Aidan O'Donnell

Article published on the 2008-11-10 Latest update 2008-12-12 15:47 TU

After the Opera Bastille's first production of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde in 1997, a new production was unveiled in 2005 with direction by Peter Sellars. This production has now returned for a final run during the month of November.

 

Wagner had to overcome debtors, a voiceless soprano and plenty of delays to put on the 1860 Munich premiere of Tristan und Isolde in which a certain Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld sang the role of Tristan.

That first run was all a bit too much for Herr Schnorr von Carolsfeld, who died only a few weeks after the first production ended.

Clifton Forbis is singing the role in the current re-production and, when I met him between acts at the dress rehearsal, he reminded me of the inauspicious beginning to the lead tenor role, 

On the last run-through Forbis however was looking - and, perhaps more importantly, sounding - in the full of his health.

Ekaterina Gubanova (Brangäne) in the background, Clifton Forbis (Tristan) and Waltraud Meier (Isolde)
(Photo: A. Poupeney/ Opéra national de Paris)

Relaxing in between the second and third act in his dressing-room, Forbis was a model of hospitality and ease.

He didn't resemble a man who was singing his way through the centuries-old legend in which Tristan falls for an Irishwoman, Isolde, whom he's supposed to be chaperoning to the bridgegroom King Marke. As often in the world of opera, things don't work out. 

But are the challenges of the role exaggerated?

"It is an extremely difficult piece, probably one of the hardest pieces there is," Forbis said. "It is horrendously hard, in some places written less than friendly - if we can put it that way and be nice about it".  

So what is different about singing a Wagnerian tenor part, rather than any of the other great tenor roles in the repertoire?

"You can't do, you know, 40 performances of Tristan a year," he said. "You can't do that many of them, so when you get one, you want it to be special."

Waltraud Meier (Isolde), Clifton Forbis (Tristan) and Franz-Josef Selig (König Marke) in the foreground (l to r). Ralf Lukas (Melot) is in the background.
(Photo: A. Poupeney/ Opéra national de Paris)

Forbis agreed, nonetheless, that the opera was enjoying "some long-deserved popularity".

 

The quality and number of Wagner productions seems to be on the rise in opera houses around the world and Forbis will no sooner have finished with this production, than he'll be off to the Lyric Opera in Chicago to sing in a new production opposite Deborah Voigt's Isolde.

 

I put it to him that February 2009 was quite soon to be singing such a demanding role again. So how will he approach the part, in the Chicago production, that he will have just finished singing in Paris?

 

"You kind of step back and start from square one in a situation like that. You really kind of have to, I think, forget what you've done, to a degree", he said. "Because you can't add too much to what you've done because, if you do, it becomes vocally dangerous, if you keep trying for more and more and more and more."  

 

From the original run three years ago, what has distinguished this production above and beyond the music, is the video accompaniment directed by Bill Viola. The only moments of the Bastille's Tristan not performed with video are the overtures played to a dropped curtain.  

"Some of the images are very realistic," Viola explained. "You see the images of the ocean you see images of two people walking from a very far distance, and others are very metaphoric."

Clifton Forbis (Tristan) and Waltraud Meier (Isolde)
(Photo: A. Poupeney/ Opéra national de Paris)

 

The video is initially overwhelming since the 12-metre wide screen dwarfs the performers on stage. It takes a while to get used to the imagery unfurling at the same time as the singers act out the drama.

 

By Act two, however, the video tends to complement rather than outdo the onstage characters. Viola says that one of the really interesting things in preparing this production was that director Peter Sellars came in after work was well underway on the music and the video.

 

Viola is absolutely right when he describes the set as "extremely simple".

 

"Peter came up with this beautiful minimal set, all in black - various shades of black and grey - people on this sort of platform which can become a bed, or a tomb, or a mountain, or anything you want to imagine," he told me.

 

But, for him, the video does more than simply allow the stage to be stripped down to a minimum, "it is actually telling the story of their inner lives, their deepest emotional selves," he maintains.

Waltraud Meier (Isolde)
(Photo: A. Poupeney/ Opéra national de Paris)