Essa-Pekka Salonen's very first "Tristan und Isolde" was a dazzling
affair, an experience to treasure.  He and the Los Angeles Philharmonic
yesterday concluded the second series of three concerts, each dedicated
to an act of the opera, along with companion pieces of related music.

After Friday night's astonishing Act 1 (see
http://www.sandiegomag.com/opera/tristan.shtml), it didn't seem possible
to scale greater heights, but the best got better both Saturday night
and Sunday afternoon.  Imagine the Act 2 love duet without the tenor
thinking about Act 3 just around the corner.  Clifton Forbis could -
and did - sang all out, secure in the knowledge that he had 12 hours
to recover before the bandages came off, letting blood and voice flow
unabated.  Christine Brewer's mighty Isolde had Jill Grove's clarion
Brangane as an equal partner, not somebody to echo the voice in the
background.  They were thrilling.

Alan Held's Kurwenal towered over the wounded Tristan, physically,
vocally, but in Tristan's final scene, Forbis reached down for more and
more power, in a series of sonic fireworks.  Chances are Forbis is - or
will soon be - a great heldentenor, but something is missing, at least
for me.  The sounds are all there, but the music comes and goes.  His
final, dying "Isolde!" was heartbreaking, but unlike Brewer and Grove,
"beautiful singing" sometimes took backseat to producing a big sound.

The orchestra, however, never faced a choice between skill and artistry
- it just carried on, for more than four hours of playing on an even
keel, with a kind of perfection.  Of the many high points, the one that
spoke to me most powerfully was the Prelude to Act 3.  Salonen conducted
with transparent presence, fluid, graceful movements, a performance
without idiosyncracy, mannerism.  It was "just the music," pure and
utterly simple, self-assured, inevitable.  The only similar experience
I had in recent years was Simon Rattle's Mahler Seventh with the Berlin
Philharmonic.  Both performances defied description, both became instant
reference points.  (Salonen, apparently, will renew his contract in Los
Angeles - see the last item at
http://www.sfcv.org/arts_revs/music_news_12_14_04.php).

And so, we come to the matter of LavaLamps or black velvet Elvis portraits
or...  No, let's talk about color organs.  Whatever happened to them?
They have come and gone, true, but why did they come, and why did they
end up in abandoned attics?  The idea was to make music visible.  Reality
was that even the misguided few who couldn't - or wouldn't - provide
their own images, very soon tired of flickering lights, undulating lines,
pulsating to music, giving the listener a grand mal migraine.

The news about color organs apparently never reached Peter Sellars.
His direction of the Tristan Project called for placing singer all around
Disney Hall (which turned out OK, but not really "necessary") and for
Bill Viola's video of vibrating images to accompany the music.  Did the
impersonal strip-tease add to the finale of Act 1?  Will he get rid of
his shorts?  (He did, and she went stark nekked as well.) Was this
something Wagner forgot to include in the opera.  Is it really necessary
to illustrate the Liebestod with a lifesize Alka-seltzer Tristan slowly
bubbling away and dissolving?  Maybe not.

But here's the real puzzle.  The same director who comes up with such
asinine tricks is the same Peter Sellars, who has a brilliant explanation
why that final aria should not be called "love-death" (it's transcendence,
not death), or who can speak of the work in a mesmerizing, intelligent,
thought-provoking way for hours.  Before each concert, Sellars held the
floor in lectures, as hundreds from the audience admired the man for
what he does so well.  Time and again, I had this experience of Sellars
providing real value when *speaking* about music (Western, Arabic, Chinese
- you name it), only to go on and try to impose some cockamamy melting-Tristan
idea on the audience.

To his defense came some in the audience with comments such as "it's not
so bad" or, more frequently, "you don't have to watch it." High praise,
indeed.  Also, considering the IMAX-size screen, ignorance may be bliss,
but it's not a realistic alternative.  Also, it all costs money, money
better spent on higher salaries for musicians and making more low-cost
tickets available to students.  That, however, is not a sufficiently
hochdramatische approach, I admit.

Janos Gereben/SF
www.sfcv.org
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