Richard Wagner’s work is often seen as a monument to love, but Nike Wagner argues that its philosophically rich dialectic presents the radical love in the central act as deeply connected with a longing for death and a dissolution of identity, ultimately expressing “a desire for regression…into blissful former times.”
Director Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson’s new production of Tristan und Isolde at the Bayreuth Festival brings this concept to life by anchoring the lovers to a crucial moment from the earlier plot: their fateful gaze and realisation of desire while Isolde nursed the wounded “Tantris.” Arnarsson, along with his dramaturge Andri Hardmeier, presents an esoteric, deconstructionist staging that focuses on the lovers’ attempts to recapture this intense moment of self-recognition, with their philosophical and emotional struggles binding the characters towards the ending’s cathartic acts of self-destruction.
As the prelude ends, the curtain rises to reveal Tristan’s ship, a space that set designer Vytautas Narbutas continually transforms to reflect Arnarsson’s vision. The lovers and their entourage occupy the vessel’s deck, with the scene bleak and enveloped in persistent darkness. Two striking set pieces in the first act stand out as thematic anchors: ropes that hang precariously from above, and Isolde’s oversized wedding dress with its stage-spanning train (designed by Sibylle Wallum), upon which she angrily scribbles phrases from her soliloquies and curses. Arnarsson places Isolde at the centre of his vision’s narrative, with her words giving her the power to challenge the political forces imposed upon her by her captors.
Isolde undergoes a powerful emotional journey as she confronts the truth of Tristan’s deceit, his denial of their mutual desire, and ultimately, his betrayal of himself and his will. In Arnarsson’s production, Isolde’s deep psychological insight allows her to gradually dismantle Tristan’s heroic façade. Tristan accepts Isolde’s poison as a form of atonement for his actions, his readiness to embrace death silently acknowledging his love. Diverging from the libretto, Isolde knocks the Liebestrank from Tristan’s hand, freeing them from its external spell and the constraints of social obligation. As the first act closes, the ropes fall from the ceiling, and the lovers descend further into the interior of the vessel.
Instead of setting Act II in King Marke’s castle, Narbutas locates the action within the hold of Tristan’s ship, highlighting the lovers’ inability to escape the place of their fateful reunion. The rusted ruin of the ship’s underbelly becomes a reliquary for looted art symbolising Romanticism—one notable example being Caspar David Friedrich’s “Ships in the Harbor of Greifswald,” with its imagery of vessels sailing against a melancholic seascape reflecting the main characters’ isolation and longing. The space also contains old Bayreuth set pieces (such as Herheim’s clock from Parsifal) and treasures and artefacts that represent idealised heroism and womanhood.
Tristan and Isolde wander through this space, confronting these objects of cultural memory as they philosophise about their devotion to the night. When Tristan rediscovers the sword that gave Isolde power over Tantris’s life, he offers her the weapon as yet another gesture of atonement and surrender. Isolde’s refusal to kill him then marks the transition into the opera’s magnificent love duet.
Unlike traditional interpretations that portray the meditative “O sink hernieder Nacht” as a moment of blissful yet fleeting consummation, Arnarsson’s production presents the lovers as continuing to explore this music in solitude, each confronting relics of their past identities in an act of self-abandonment. This dramaturgical approach is distinctly Schopenhauerian, emphasising the dissolution of the individual will into a transcendent, universal “we.” It is only when they hear Brangäne’s warning that the lovers finally share an intimate embrace. After King Marke interrupts them, Arnarsson ends the second act not with Tristan being wounded by Melot’s sword, but by his consumption of the Todestrank.
In the final act, Narbutas deconstructs Tristan’s ship, scattering its remains across a chthonic representation of limbo, where Kurwenal and the shepherd, dressed in angelic garb, watch over the hero. The dying Tristan, dressed in a tunic made from Isolde’s wedding train, lies upon a heap of outdated symbols of masculine heroism. As he goes through stages of mania and delirium, Tristan interacts with the wreckage of his ship and his past, sometimes even covering himself with Isolde’s train.
The act’s conclusion avoids the collateral damage of Melot and Kurwenal’s deaths, instead focusing on the lovers’ self-abandonment and the dissolution of their individual identities. Isolde’s Liebestod culminates in an act of suicide as she partakes of the Todestrank, clutching the symbolic wedding train as she reaches her state of self-realisation through oblivion.
Arnarsson’s interpretation of Tristan initially presents a dizzying array of symbols that, while seemingly incoherent at first, gradually unveil a wealth of detail that highlights the libretto’s rich Schopenhauerian themes. Hardmeier’s non-interventionist approach effectively serves the interior nature of the drama, allowing the narrative to unfold as a deep psychological discourse between the two central characters. However, some directorial choices can occasionally appear opaque: Kurwenal and Brangäne often seem to be left without specific direction for much of their time on stage, and King Marke’s aggressive portrayal doesn’t convincingly align with the overall vision of subverting the supporting characters’ motivations to the leads’ overwhelming will.
Perhaps most critically, the psychological motivations that guide Tristan and Isolde toward death and their relationship to the production’s symbols are portrayed inconsistently. For example, the lovers’ reliance on Isolde’s train as a plot device for Arnarsson’s death-devoted thesis is convincing throughout the opera. However, the iconography behind the clutter in the later acts can be challenging to interpret without thoroughly examining the pieces and their artistic significance. While Arnarsson’s production is psychologically intriguing in its exploration of the work’s Schopenhauerian underpinnings, it would greatly benefit from future revivals that emphasize clearer direction and more purposeful character motivation throughout its existence in the Festival.
This review is informed by two performances of Tristan at Bayreuth on August 3 and August 6. Though largely enjoyable, both iterations exhibited enough differences in technical execution to reveal how musicians interact with this incredibly challenging and thematically complex work.
Semyon Bychkov led the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra in a deeply expressive and beautifully textured interpretation of the score, with his seamless orchestral phrasing expertly navigating Wagner’s instrumental transformations. Bychkov highlighted the Romantic nature of the work, bringing the Sehnsuchtmotiv and the Liebestrank music to the forefront with clarity and emotional impact during the first act prelude. He also imbued the elegiac music of the third act prelude with an ethereal, haunting quality, and provided an accompaniment full of yearning and suffering for Tristan’s deliriums.
Throughout both performances, key instrumental voices such as the cor anglais, clarinets, cellos, and bass clarinet wove in and out of the orchestral backdrop, adding depth to the libretto’s emotionally rich narrative. On the technical side, Bychkov and his orchestra faced some coordination issues between brass and wind instruments within the pit, as well as with the singers during the performance on August 3, and the balance at times was rather loud, threatening to overpower the singers even in the voice-friendly Festspielhaus. The performance on August 6 was superior, with more judicious pacing, better-tempered volumes, and an overall arc that achieved a more emotionally coherent through line.
As King Marke, Günther Groissböck’s vocal production varied in quality between the two performances. The Austrian bass’s voice was darker, more resonant, and evenly produced on August 3, but sounded strained and lacked colour as the vocal line ascended during the August 6 performance. Groissböck’s snarling interpretation, combined with unusual jaw manipulations in his vocal production, resulted in a cruel portrayal of the character that seemed to contradict the overall concept of the production.
The smaller roles were aptly handled by a younger generation of artists: tenors Matthew Newlin and Daniel Lenz sang the brief yet evocative parts of the Sailor and Shepherd with beautiful, floating lyric tenor voices, while Birger Radde’s Melot made a significant onstage presence despite the liberties Arnarsson took with his character’s direction.
Despite the inconsistencies in Arnarsson’s dramaturgical execution and the musicians’ occasional challenges, both performances of Tristan und Isolde transcended these difficulties, delivering enjoyable, emotionally resonant, and even profoundly moving theatre.
Photos: Enrico Nawrath
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