On 19, 22 and 29 December the Mariinsky Theatre will present the first premiere of its 242nd season – a new production of Richard Wagner’s enchanting opera Tristan und Isolde. Directors Konstantin Balakin and Alexei Stepanyuk, together with designer Elena Vershinina, will bring this ode to all-consuming love to life on the stage of the Concert Hall.
The world premiere of Tristan und Isoldetook place almost 160 years ago, on 10 June 1865, at Munich’s Royal Court Theatre (now the Bayerische Staatsoper), conducted by Hans von Bülow. The opera was received with great enthusiasm, with the first performances achieving triumphant success.
Despite its acclaimed premiere and subsequent international renown, this work’s stage history is not replete with productions. This is primarily due to the complexity of the score and the significant demands placed on the performers, which few opera companies can meet. The Mariinsky Theatre, with its constellation of Wagnerian singers, its truly Wagnerian orchestra and its unique repertoire, is the only theatre in Russia with a history of staging Tristan und Isolde.
The opera was first performed at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1898 by a German company, but on 5 April 1899 the theatre’s own production premiered (in Russian, translated by Vsevolod Cheshikhin and edited by Ivan Ershov). Ten years later, in 1909, audiences witnessed Vsevolod Meyerhold’s directorial vision, with set design by Alexander Shervashidze (in Russian, translated by Viktor Kolomiytsov). The production received mixed reviews but had a significant impact on Meyerhold’s development as a director. With the outbreak of the First World War, all German operas disappeared from the theatre’s repertoire. Tristan und Isolde did not reappear on the playbills during the Soviet era.
The opera’s next staging came only in the new millennium, in 2005, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, with set design by Zinovy Margolin, Irina Tsvetkova and Gleb Filshtinsky. Valery Gergiev conducted. The production ran on the Mariinsky Theatre’s Historic Stage until 2010 and was transferred to Mariinsky II in 2015.
Konstantin Balakin and Alexei Stepanyuk’s production offers a fresh perspective on this renowned tale of love and death. In the Concert Hall, where the stage, reminiscent of an ancient amphitheatre, is situated below the stalls, no detail will escape the attentive gaze of the audience. Profound emotions and subtle, barely perceptible nuances will unfold before the audience with utmost clarity.
“Love here is presented as a myth, as an element and as a space,” Konstantin Balakin emphasises. “It is dark, but this darkness has a certain solemnity, a ritualistic quality. Wagner literally hypnotises a listener: from the first to the last sound we are immersed in an infinitely extended melody; it is mesmerising, leading us somewhere, carrying us away, we simultaneously soar and plunge into the abyss. The composer overlays his personal, rather painful experiences onto a medieval legend that is not actually tied to any particular era but continues to resonate today. Wagner said that he wanted to give the art of the future new paths, and in Tristan und Isolde he succeeded in doing this like nowhere else: symbolism, modernism and even postmodernism find expression in this opera.”
Wagner wrote the libretto for Tristan und Isolde himself, drawing inspiration from the medieval Celtic legend recounted in Gottfried von Strassburg’s epic poem. The composer significantly condensed the plot, the number of scenes, and the characters. He placed the focus on two lovers who are destined to reveal their feelings for each other only on the threshold of death.
“Young people today are pragmatic,” notes Alexei Stepanyuk. “They meet online, they marry online. Tristan und Isolde is an island of intoxicating, exalted love, where every phrase is charged with the powerful energy of passion. This production should remind us that beyond the material, there is something more – feelings and emotions. They can be so all-consuming that the concepts of ‘love’ and ‘death’ become synonymous. And death is not to be feared.”
The production design, conceived by the directors, will incorporate themes that allude to Arnold Böcklin’s iconic symbolist painting Isle of the Dead, a work contemporary to Wagner. A century ago a reproduction of this painting could be found in almost every drawing-room, not only in Germany and Austria but also in Russia. Motifs from the painting, which ushered in a new, symbolist era in painting, will serve as a visual reflection of the opera’s central idea – the ultimate collision of love and death, the mystery that the composer termed Liebestod.
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