In this extraordinary production of Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, Peter Sellars calms the heaving emotions of the two protagonists in a setting stripped of all earthly considerations.
Tristan und Isolde is an immense operatic poem, a song of love and death inspired by the medieval legend of Tristan and Iseult and the passion that Richard Wagner nurtured for Mathilde, the wife of his rich Zurich patron, Otto Wesendonck. In musical terms, the opera marks a turning point in Wagner’s works and indeed in the history of Western music for its audacious harmonies and the way in which the composer overlays different rhythms, thus creating a languishing and endlessly prolonged tension. In this extraordinary production, Peter Sellars calms the heaving emotions of the two protagonists in a setting stripped of all earthly considerations. Detached from the stage, suspended like an altarpiece, Bill Viola’s videos portray the initiatory quest of the lovers to attain their nirvana. The association of these two major artists gives life to a unique and total work of art.
Tristan und Isolde
Opera in three acts
Music:
Richard Wagner - (1813 - 1883)
Libretto:
Richard Wagner
Conductor:
Gustavo Dudamel
Director:
Peter Sellars
Video:
Bill Viola
Costume design:
Martin Pakledinaz
Lighting design:
James F. Ingalls
Chorus master:
Alessandro Di Stefano
Isolde:
Mary Elizabeth Williams
Tristan:
Gwyn Hughes Jones
Brangäne:
Okka von der Damerau
Kurwenal:
Ryan Speedo Green
König Marke:
Eric Owens
Melot:
Neal Cooper
Ein Hirt, ein Seeman:
Maciej Kwaśnikowski
Ein Steuermann:
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