Ha, diese Stimme! Seine Stimme!
Marco Arturo Marelli directs Tristan und Isolde in Dresden (***) [stream]
This 30-year-old production by Marco Arturo Marelli is particularly conventional. It is so terribly old-fashioned that I was unable to watch it in one sitting. At its center is a cube with sliding doors that successively let in the specters of day and night. After having drunk the love potion, a concealing gauze cloth wraps itself around the cube. The second act is bathed in atmospheric blue light. In the third act, Tristan's sick bed is draped over an uncomfortable slope of sand or concrete. The actor's direction is predictable and uninteresting.
On Klaus Florian Vogt, minds have been dividied for some time now. He has a particularly well-projecting voice that gives his delivery a sensuousness all of its own. Without it, he would not even have a singing career. For many, he is the owner of a boy's voice. For a Tristan, this is grossly insufficient. It is precisely the sensuality emanating from a baritone-timbered, virile tenor that makes this part so exciting, especially in the third act. That is completely absent in this case, and so the third act is an unmitigated disaster. It is painful to watch and I can hardly imagine Vogt singing many Tristans, though he clearly has his fans. The vocal line is conducted without the slightest hitch, the diction, as always, is excellent, with attention to all consonants. That only works in the lyrical harmony singing with Isolde in the second act. But the essentials are missing. It also means that lyrical passages like "Dem Land, das Tristan meint" lack all persuasiveness.
I am not a fan of the tendency to cast Isolde with lighter sopranos, even though I understand that it is a matter of necessity. A year ago Camilla Nylund still held it for impossible to sing high-dramatic Wagner parts and now look! After her quite successful Götterdämmerung-Brünnhilde in Zurich, she will soon be in Bayreuth as Isolde. Nylund is a lirico spinto and she does not make a great impression here. Her opening frenzy is weak, with quite a few sloppy, ugly notes. "When a lyrical soprano with a lot of power, that is, a female lirico spinto, sings Isolde, you will be enraptured by a radiant high register that makes a lot of impression and is certainly not insignificant. But you will also have to acknowledge that the middle register sounds rather weak and the low register at times will resemble a speaking register rather than a chest register. An Isolde without middle register and depth is no Isolde," Jens Malte Fischer writes in his booklet "Grosse Stimmen." I agree. The dome of the high register must be supported by strong pillars. Not coincidentally, Wagner wrote unequivocally in an 1858 letter : "I need, especially for Isolde, voice, voice, voice!" There is no denying that Isolde, almost even more than Brünnhilde in Götterdämmerung, must possess an element of the vocal, the majestic, the grandiose, which Kirsten Flagstad embodied in unparalleled fashion and which seems to have disappeared from Tristan performances since Birgit Nilsson.
Georg Zeppenfeld, by virtue of his stature, has no natural authority for King Marke. That is not so bad in this production. His monologue lasts only 12 minutes. Therefore, he has had ample time in advance to sculpt and calculate each syllable for maximum effect. And he does so with great empathy and the art of articulation proper to him. A slightly deeper timbre, like that of the Finnish basses, would have made his performance a real gem.
Tanja Ariane Baumgartner has a poorly developed chest register. For a German singer, her diction is rather sloppy, her delivery almost unintelligible, but the attitude and nuanced acting is interesting. Martin Gantner as Kurwenal performs unevenly, not as strongly as in his Telramund where he can be more eloquent with his intelligent text interpretation.
The Staatskapelle Dresden often sounds rather undercooled under Christian Thielemann. For example, the crescendo in the prelude lacks 2 degrees of fever, and this is actually exemplary of the entire evening. Dynamically, this is very extreme. I had to adjust the volume control several times. So I guess that is mainly due to the recording of this stream.
Watch the show at Medici TV.