Wagner Tristan und Isolde Tristan: Robert Gambill Isolde: Nina Stemme (pictured) Brangäne
Katarina Karnéus Kurwenal: Bo Skovhus King Marke: René Pape Opus Arte: OA0988D [Glyndebourne August 2007; 3 discs approx 350 Mins, released 01/01/2008] The Glyndebourne Tristan und Isolde cannot be fairly hailed or dismissed in a single review, and it has been a salutary experience to trawl many of the live performance reviews collected by TheOperaCritic. Closest to my own response was that of the Telegraph. Whilst awaiting our vocal specialist's reaction to the new DVD and its substantial "extras" an editorial welcome may be not out of order? (MusicalPointers was not vouchsafed an opportunity to review it live; perhaps Glyndebourne may relent for the revival in 2009...) Not even imperfect Wagnerites, we have been bemused to discover that there are 57 available recordings of Tristan on disc, apart from this one! I have been to see The Ring and Tristan at intervals since the days of Flagstad; usually fidgeting and sometimes dozing during parts of the long Acts. In recent years the last Tristan und Isolde production we saw, with the lovers confined to separate boxes either side of the stage, seemed the silliest (Wernicke ROH Covent Garden 2000). This DVD of Lehnhoff's 2007 revival of Tristan & Isolde captivated and captured me; I have rarely been so engrossed from start to finish with Wagner at his heaviest (like Beecham, I have retained a soft spot for Der Meistersinger). Taken in large sized bites over several days, I felt from the start that Lehnhoff and his colleagues had got the staging and visual values right in its simplicity. Salutary however to learn from the Financial Times (which has only very recently become free to read on the web) that ' - - Lehnhoff learned his craft in the early 1960s - - its inspiration has begun to look old-fashioned' - - [FT August 2007]. Heigh-ho, fashion changes quickly... A word about the subtitles. Unlike in the theatre, where looking up from the stage and back is distracting and divides attention, they seemed perfect here ("ECI") - well placed on the screen, fully legible without being over obtrusive, one took them in without having to focus deliberately. I found they made the length of the duets fully acceptable and helped to keep restlessness at bay. (One thought for the future, which has often occurred to me; how much would it take to increase choice to include original language PLUS translation of your choice? I greatly enjoy parallel texts with CDs, and the equivalent - which of course must be optional - could only be a bonus.) Forgive such a personal indulgence; a serious review of the singing will be added early in January. Peter Grahame Woolf
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