Returning to Wagner at San Francisco Opera

Yesterday afternoon I returned to the War Memorial Opera House for a second encounter with Paul Curran’s staging of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde with tenor Simon O’Neill and soprano Anja Kampe in the title roles. There is so much depth in not only the narrative itself but also the many was in which the composer deployed key motifs to advance that narrative. Indeed, that intimate relationship between the music and the drama is so critical that the “role” of conductor Eun Sun Kim was as critical to the narrative as any of the characters up on the stage itself. As a result, from yesterday’s vantage point, I had to make no end of judicious choices between the orchestra pit and the stage.

Thus, by the end of the afternoon, I felt that I had experienced a thoroughly engaging span of four and one-half hours. As is the case with most operas, the overall structure is a balance between action and reflection. For the most part, Wagner’s music provides the foundation for the reflective episodes. There is so much depth in that reflection that, while the action itself is critical to the narrative, the music charges it as if it were a bolt of lightning. It should therefore be no surprise that the last of the three acts of this opera should be structured around extended reflections with the action kept to a bare minimum.

Isolde (Anja Kampe) and Tristan (Simon O’Neill) feeling the first effects of her love potion (photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of SFO)

For the most part, those reflections unfold through the music. In that respect I feel it particularly significant to note the extent to which there was always an intimate conjunction of Kim’s judicious pacing of Wagner’s score with the unfolding of Curran’s actions, particularly during those critical moments at the end of the first act when the love potion beings to take effect. It is worth noting that Wagner wrote his book-length essay Opera and Drama in 1851, and Tristan und Isolde, which was first performed in 1886, makes it clear that he believed in turning theory into practice. (Another “fun fact” is that Tristan was composed at the same time that Wagner was working on his Der Ring des Nibelungen cycle.) Curran, in turn, realized Wagner’s “practice” through a consistently compelling account of the libretto’s narrative.

There are, of course, any number of jokes about the “extended durations” of Wagner operas; but Curran’s staging kept the viewer on the edge of his/her/their seat, rather than looking at one’s watch!