Barenboim debuts "Tristan" with passion, fatalism

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-01 16:05

In this photo released by the Metropolitan Opera, Peter Seiffert portrays Tristan and Katarina Dalayman appears as Isolde in the final dress rehearsal of Wagner's 'Tristan und Isolde,' Tuesday, Nov. 25, 2008 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.[Agencies]

Each time the Metropolitan Opera performed Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" last season the big question was who would show up in the title roles. This season, both lead singers are new to their parts at the Met — and both went on as scheduled for the opening. The real news was in the pit.

Conductor Daniel Barenboim, making a long overdue company debut Friday night, drew inspired playing from the orchestra. Passion and yearning infused his expansive interpretation, along with a sense of fatalism. Rarely has the introduction to Act 3 sounded more desolate, especially the way the orchestra attacked the repeat of the opening phrase, barely shuddering back to life as Tristan lies hovering near death.

In fact, Barenboim made it clear at a roundtable discussion recently that he sees the work not as a tragic love story but as "an opera about death.

"And it is that death," he said, "the fear of death and the looking for death as the only possible way to solve the entanglement in which they find, this is, if you want, the locomotive, the motor of the opera."

There were many distinctive touches — the extra resonance of the strings when Isolde recalls looking into the eyes of the wounded Tristan and losing the will to kill him; the mocking trill in the orchestra when Tristan's companion Kurwenal announces their arrival at Cornwall; the ethereal final chords, which Barenboim drew out as if reluctant to let the last wisp of music end.

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