[This from the current NZZ. I'm dying to hear Haitink's new recording of Tristan und Isolde, which was played in this recital nine days ago in London. Has anyone heard the recording yet?] Haitink/Wernicke "Tristan und Isolde" at Covent Garden The Lives of Red and Blue If you just could disappear in the music! Totally be made one with it, completely inwowen in it, conquered by stunning harmonies, eroticised by the wonderful singing, then you are all traitors in Wagners "Tristan und Isolde". Disappointed, fooled, betrayed, illoyal; those are the keywords of the text. Only one thing is an exception from this formula; and that is the musick itself. Just therefore the name of the undiscutable victor at Covent Garden, Londons most famous operahouse, which hasn't seen a "Tristan und Isolde" in 18 years, Bernard Haitink, who is the musical chief of the place. Haitink is a quiet musician, who doesn't like show and spectaular gestures. Right therefore it is the impression, that this "Tristan", on record, really not reveals its special charm. The storming hailing of the conductor by the audience would well be completely ununderstandable for the listener to the recording. Haitink unfolds the "Tristan" over four hours. That means hot ignominy as well as extreme intensity. Brutalities (that lies mainly in the first akt) or the morbidezzery fresch accords, tempo excess as well, outpointed soundmixes. So, a mittig "Isolde", who doesn't tell any mystery or mythos, seen as a shape rooted in history in a always astonishing peculiarity, on this partiture fully nightly will-less ring. So comes this "Tristan und Isolde" in shape; without psychologic brimborium without the implication of powerakt of animalic musicality. Modern analytic, in foundation sceptic, far from all hagiographics. Haitink places the heroic pair in a misantropical artistic world. There is not that too great love agreed, which our shameful world (everywhere around Covert Garden sleeps those who fell through the social net in the doorways) no wiewpoint can nivellize and thereby flees in the for ever dead beauty of the soundcanvases. Haitink examinates if the piece can stand up against sharpcoloured commercialsigns, against the dirty Presto of the metropolis, against the cruelty of racism (Londons papers are full of articles on a murdered student, who was killed because of his jewish origin). But Haitink doesn't give these questions an answer pleading for the classical musick. He just asks the questions and turn away from the listeners reaction. Everybody else want something different. At least the primus motor and regisseur Herbert Wernicke. He proves in hours that Man and Woman doesn't fit together, that Tristan und Isolde hence cannot have each other. Therefore there stand two large containers, which both are missing one front, roof and wallpart, and which dance the ballet of giants, on the stage. Tristan lives in a darkblue container, Isolde in a red one, which both leave clear images for damadged souls, and there are three oversized spears pointing into the containers - Abstract images without sailiorsromanticism. The rest of the personeel, tedious groups of people around the protagonists, roam around the containers. Cool and disciplined like Haitink, Peter Rose plays the man of power Marke. No chickenhut! Obviously Isolde has kept him on distance; no kiss, no nothing. The lament of a never-won woman keeps within ranges. Alan Titus acts loudly the Tristancompaigion Kurwenal; The raw unsympathetic side of the want-to-have/suiciders and Isolde-lovers is here critizised. But there are also other women. While Kurwenal is lost in brainless 'Niebelungentreue', thinking of every mood of his master, Petra Lang show us a Brangaene who is rather emancipated - also from Isolde. A portrait rounded off still full of edges. Remains the protagonists: Gabriele Schnaut and the from the third akt indisposed forgiven Jon Frederic West. She sings nextdoors to him, clearly, by and then firm in the high register, seemingly without exhaustion. Thereto she wears a shining white dress, which hardly is different from the original which Lili Lehmann wore in the 1884 Covent Garden production. This anachronistic patch disturbs a whole evening along. Isolde, like Tristan, therewith offers a hopeless, obsolete, Realotheatre with which she signals with upgiven gestures what moves in their souls, and what the music tell us much more precisely. Here the regisseur Wernicke gcame on shame. Maybe he thought that a personleading, which stands against his abstract scenery and the outcircled conductor Haitink, has no chance to keep alive. But so sings the loving pair full of compassion beside the grave on the szene. A wonderful contrast. Andreas Breitenstein NZZ 20.10.2000 Mats Norrman [log in to unmask]