Because of the length of the Sunday Opera this week (10/13 3:00 p.m.), The Dress Circle and all subsequent programming will begin one hour later than usual.
We’re off to the Bayreuth Festival on this week’s Sunday Opera for Richard Wagner’s strange tale of love, “Tristan und Isolde.” Why is it strange? Five deaths and immeasurable heartache result from the wrong two people being given a love potion.
Tristan (Andreas Schager), a knight of Cornwall, travels to Ireland to bring Princess Isolde (Camilla Nylund) back to Cornwall to marry his uncle, King Marke (Gunther Groissbock). On their way back, they accidentally drink a love potion, carried by Isolde’s maid, Brangane (Christa Mayer), which was meant for the king, and they fall in love.
They are betrayed by Tristan’s friend, the courtier Melot (Birger Radde), whom Tristan challenges and allows Melot to mortally wound him. Tristan’s servant Kurwenal (Olafur Sigurdarson) doesn’t realize that Tristan has done this as the “honorable way out,” and kills Melot in a sword fight in which he is mortally wounded, dying at Tristan’s feet.
As Tristan dies a very slow death, Isolde visits him and sings the famous “Liebestod” or “Love Death,” but is revived long enough to hear King Marke say that Brangane has explained what has happened, and he happily releases Isolde to marry Tristan, but she’s dead by that time.
The cast also includes Daniel Jenz, Lawson Anderson, and Matthew Newlin who are joined by the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and Chorus. The conductor is Semyon Bychkov.
After the heaviness of Tristan, a change of mood is in order, so we’ll turn to a ballet by Lord Berners (Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson) entitled “The Triumph of Neptune.” Performed by the English Northern Philharmonic under the direction of David Lloyd-Jones, this bit of fluff centers around a telescope placed on London Bridge which allows viewers not only see “Fairyland” but visit it as well!
