In Act I, the stage picture is cluttered, the meaning unclear. This is an all too familiar issue at the modern Met, which, under the aegis of Peter Gelb, the general manager, more or less mandates clutter: hulking sets (by Es Devlin, in this case), choreography (by Annie-B Parson), video and live projections (by Ruth Hogben and Jason H. Thompson). The audience is often left unsure about what it should be looking at. Lost in the melee of imagery—ocean waves, bottles and potions, knives, and so on—is the crux on which the opera turns: Isolde’s uncontainable rage at being carted off to marry King Mark, in the clutches of the man who killed her beloved.
Later on, Sharon’s conception snaps into focus. In Act II, Devlin’s set becomes a floating fantasy realm where the lovers lose themselves in their forbidden desires. They sing from the inside of a conelike apparatus that has the property of amplifying their voices. At times, segments of the cone separate and carry the lovers in opposite directions—an excellent visual metaphor for the narcissism of their passion. In Act III, as the wounded Tristan suffers, hallucinates, and dies, he is seen both lying on a hospital table and wandering in a tunnel populated by white-clad figures. The singer and his double change places as the character passes in and out of consciousness. At the end, Isolde is seen giving birth to a child and joining Tristan in the beyond. The images are at once affecting and jarring—dream and nightmare intermingled. The confusions of Act I notwithstanding, Sharon has passed the “Tristan” challenge. He will next take on the “Ring,” beginning in the 2027-28 season.
The chief musical pleasure of this “Tristan,” on the second night of the run, was Michael Spyres’s portrayal of the damaged hero. This Missouri-born, Vienna-trained tenor has the capacity to sing almost anything, his repertory encompassing Handel, Mozart, bel canto, grand opera, and Wagner. Even more remarkably, he can assume baritone roles as well as tenor ones. He calls himself a “baritenor,” and the label fits. He is thus well suited to Tristan, whose music often borders on the baritonal. Lauritz Melchior, the part’s most storied interpreter on recording, had a similarly broad range. If Spyres cannot match Melchior’s trumpeting high notes, he traversed the score with unfaltering stamina, retaining clarity of diction and breadth of phrase throughout. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Tristan sung so securely and so musically.
The heavily promoted Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen proved problematic as Isolde. She has been appointed the Met’s leading lady in Wagner and is slated to sing Brünnhilde in Sharon’s “Ring.” Her high notes are glorious, spurring comparisons with Birgit Nilsson and other legends. But Isolde isn’t about high notes. Large tracts of the role lie lower in the voice, where mezzo-ish resonance is required. Davidsen’s power drops off markedly in the octave above middle C. Often, the part jumps in and out of that zone, as on the words “Fluch deinem Haupt” (“A curse on your head!”), which falls from the G at the top of the staff to the G below and then climbs up again. The fluctuating volume in such passages—“FLUCH deinem HAUPT”—made for a weirdly uneven line. Beyond that, Davidsen’s diction was mushy, and she lacked the expressive fury of Meier and other great latter-day Isoldes. Yes, the upper register is phenomenal, but I’d rather hear an Isolde who has squeaky high C’s and can sing the rest at full strength.
The subsidiary roles were a similarly mixed lot. The veteran bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny delivered Kurwenal with roughshod interpretive conviction; he is a born Wagner singer. Ryan Speedo Green, as King Mark, may not have matched Pape’s raw grandeur in the role, but he supplied an affecting sense of shattered nobility. Ekaterina Gubanova, who sang Brangäne glowingly in 2016, was less lustrous this time around.