Howard Who?

Tristan Project presented by Los Angeles Philharmonic @ Walt Disney Concert Hall

What is it about Wagner that inspires people to blow the experience up into grand statements? Certainly Beethoven or Mozart or Tchaikovsky inspire that in their own ways, but they don’t need video installations or a three act opera broken up into one act each on three consecutive nights or interludes of orchestral music by Debussy, do they?

Well, selling opera is a difficult thing these days with expensive tickets and gargantuan works. Everyone from Hollywood People from the movie business are called upon to direct them, from Anthony Minghella to William Friedkin to Zhang Yimou, and even the Met’s general manager Peter Gelb encountered hostility when it was announced that they wouldn’t be performing their grandmother’s version of opera.

Is letting Bill Viola take stage with his amazing videos going to enhance Wagner?

Truth be told, Wagner was the guy who’s often credited with taking opera to a whole new level. He made his productions crazier, fuller, more decorated, more mannered, more complete…so much so that he had to create a new word for what he was doing, Gesamtkunstwerk.

So yes, he would probably be the first to say, bigger and bolder is better.

And then there’s the matter of appealing to people of the young cosmopolitan persuasian…those with lots of money and a desire to spend it on something cultural (the aging audience for opera and classical music is a constant issue). Luckily Viola made a splash a couple years ago with his Getty exhibit, which brings in the art crowd that may not necessarily be into the music. And plus this Tristan Project premiered in Los Angeles two years ago before travelling to Paris. It’s a battle-tested work with a sure-fire artistic pedigree…enough opera to feel like you’ve dabbled but also enough video to make the pill go down sweetly and modernly.

(edit) Of course, this wouldn’t work unless it made artistic sense to begin with, unless Viola’s work was already operatic, unless Wagner’s work can score a projected image he never saw, and unless conductor Esa Pekka-Salonen was open to the relationships between the two.

If you can get a hold of these tickets, get them! Act 1 is April 12, Act 2 April 13, Act 3 April 14. And you can watch the complete versions on April 18 and 24.

I’ll leave you with Wagner’s prelude to the entire opera…a piece of music that is often cited as the one that threw the floodgates open to atonality. It sounds just as romantic as anything ever written, but the twist is that there are no resolutions to speak of, no true feelings of rest as the music sweeps you up into its neverending theme of insatiable love.

Tristan and Isolde Prelude - Richard Wagner conducted by Furtwangler

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 5:21 am and is filed under Uncategorized, Classical Music, Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.