Prom 34 (31.08.21) - Wagner’s Tristan & Isolde

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

17:00 Tuesday 31 August 2021
Royal Albert Hall

Richard Wagner: Tristan and Isolde

Simon O’Neill Tristan
Miina-Liisa Värelä Isolde
Karen Cargill Brangäne
Shenyang Kurwenal
John Relyea King Mark
Neal Cooper Melot
Stuart Jackson Shepherd/Young Sailor
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Robin Ticciati conductor

'I am still looking for a work with as dangerous a fascination, with as terrible and sweet an infinity as Tristan,’ Nietzsche wrote of Wagner’s great love tragedy. A story about longing and yearning, about an unresolved and unresolvable love, expressed in music that famously denies us resolution until its very final bars, the opera still exerts the same fascination today. Glyndebourne Music Director Robin Ticciati conducts an international cast in a concert performance marking 60 years of the company’s appearances at the Proms.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

17:00 seems to be the starting time, though an earlier listing gave it as 16:00, which would have been overdoing the caution, and could have deterred working people from attending.

[Bryn]

17:00 seems to be the starting time, though an earlier listing gave it as 16:00, which would have been overdoing the caution, and could have deterred working people from attending.

Tempting, for sure, but the scheduled start time for the follow-on programme on Radio 3 is around 20 minutes after my last bus back from the RAH. I dare not risk it, though it may well actually end in time. Looks like a Sounds job.

[Simon B]

As a ticketholder I got an email at end/Jul to say that the start time had been moved back to 17:00, so it appears not to have been a typo or similar.

Reports from someone who's been to one of the Glyndebourne performances suggest a finish time of 21:55 with the shorter Proms intervals. The RAH now say 22:00. Given that Parsifal in 2013 overran the advertised finish time by 30+ minutes, it would be unwise to place any reliance on that.

There is still no clarity on whether some of aspects of the 2021 Glyndebourne concert staging (lighting, props) will transfer to the Proms or whether it really will be a pure stand-and-deliver concert performance. Likewise whether the chorus will be recorded (as at G) or physically present given the large spaces available.

[gradus]

It should work well at the RAH, the Tristan performance I have most enjoyed was given at Snape under Goodall.

[Ein Heldenleben]

It should work well at the RAH, the Tristan performance I have most enjoyed was given at Snape under Goodall.

Ditto but WNO/Linda Esther Gray / Goodall - Dominion Theatre 1981
Also Remedios / Goodall ( I think ) ENO 80/ 81
Remedios - never bettered IMV

[Petrushka]

Ditto but WNO/Linda Esther Gray / Goodall - Dominion Theatre 1981
Also Remedios / Goodall ( I think ) ENO 80/ 81
Remedios - never bettered IMV

Saw Jon Vickers as Tristan with Sir Colin Davis at Covent Garden in 1982. Towards the end of his career but still magnificent.

[Cockney Sparrow]

Saw Jon Vickers as Tristan with Sir Colin Davis at Covent Garden in 1982. Towards the end of his career but still magnificent.

Lucky you - those days, those performers...... before my time, certainly before I could tackle Wagner as an opera goer.... (Berlioz, Mozart etc, most of what ENO/Elder/Pountney were doing in my early days - for me, Covent Garden only occasionally...Midland Proms around then?).

I saw the Glyndebourne - liked the set and production and a decent cast - Bĕlohlávek conducting Nina Stemme, Tristan - Robert Gambill, Katarina Karnéus, King Marke - René Pape.

This is the one Prom I am regretful at missing and was tempted to break my self imposed "no concert hall, no opera house performances" until, about - probably - December. I've gt certain things to finish and put in order before I am willing to run risks. But I have to say, life would be very grey and unrewarding without live performances. (Having said all that, when it comes to it, what will I decide?....).

I'm glad I hadn't trecked to Glyndebourne with all the Dress Code/interval/weather dodging/catering/ logistics to find the chorus - one of the glories of Glyndebourne - were relayed in to the auditorium.

[LHC]

Saw Jon Vickers as Tristan with Sir Colin Davis at Covent Garden in 1982. Towards the end of his career but still magnificent.

Me too, with Gwyneth Jones as Isolde. One of my greatest nights at the opera.

[duncan]

I saw the Glyndebourne - liked the set and production and a decent cast - Bĕlohlávek conducting Nina Stemme, Tristan - Robert Gambill, Katarina Karnéus, King Marke - René Pape.

This was directed by Nikolaus Lehnhoff, set in a 'womb', one of my favourite Wagner productions.

This summer's performances are semi-staged, so you won't be missing much from what you get in Sussex. Simon O’Neill's nasal tone takes a bit of adapting to but he still has the stamina for the role; Miina-Liisa Värelän was new to me and seems a promising Helden-soprano. I thought the performance didn't really catch fire. Perhaps it was the conducting, but for some reason the performance didn't quite take off. Reviews have been very good so perhaps it was just me.

Edit: Richard Bratby in The Spectator sums up my mixed feelings.

[gradus]

Saw Jon Vickers as Tristan with Sir Colin Davis at Covent Garden in 1982. Towards the end of his career but still magnificent.

I think that I stood at the back of the Stalls Circle for that production. Vickers was unsurpassed in the role as in much else that he sung, even the late in his career Das Lied at The Proms where he nearly came unstuck in the one high-lying passage.

[Prommer]

So, saw/heard this last week at Glyndebourne... overall, very good but don't want to say more (yet).

This will surely be one of the best attended, and most back-to-normal Proms of the season?

The chorus was piped in (live or recorded, I could not easily tell) - I hope they will bring the chorus to the Albert Hall. Plenty of space in the Choir.

Already semi-staged at Glyndebourne, this will translate perfectly (with no loss, even some gain) to the Hall.

[Belgrove]

We saw on Tuesday, and some thoughts are posted on the Glyndebourne thread

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?22229-Glyndebourne-Festival-2021

[Prommer]

Seriously looking forward to this: a Wagner opera performed to a pretty full Hall (I assume)... Like the old days!

[Bert Coules]

No second-interval comments? While I can't claim to have been giving this my absolutely undivided attention my impression so far is of a perfectly decent performance, though the end of act one felt a shade muddled, with a couple of key moments not quite having the weight they perhaps deserved, and the same true of the lead-up to extinguishing the signal-torch in act two: but I stress that this is a purely personal and possibly unfair impression.

I believe it's semi-staged, as at the theatre, and I wish I could see it: I'm a big fan of that kind of presentation which frequently seems to me to get closer to the dramatic heart of operas (and indeed, some plays) than can a problematic, distracting, and just plain annoying full staging.

But staged, semi-staged, stand-and-deliver concert rendition, or purely aural experience, I can't recall a single occasion when my heart didn't sink at the moment King Mark opens his mouth in act two: I have yet to be convinced that his endless monologue (and to only a slightly lesser extent his similarly protracted utterances in act three) is anything but a massive dramatic miscalculation on Wagner's part.