Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner

Tristan und Isolde

Opera by Richard Wagner

New production
Coproduction with the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Sung in German with French and English surtitles
Duration: approx. 5h15 with two intermissions*

CAST
Musical Director Marc Albrecht
Stage Director Michael Thalheimer
Scenographer Henrik Ahr
Costumes designer Michaela Barth
Lighting Designer Stefan Bolliger
Dramaturgy Luc Joosten
Choir director Mark Biggins

Tristan Gwyn Hughes Jones (15.09, 22.09, 27.09) / Burkhard Fritz (18.09, 24.09)
Isolde Elisabet Strid
Marke, King of Cornwall Tareq Nazmi
Brangäne Kristina Stanek
Kurwenal Audun Iversen
Melot Julien Henric
A young sailor, a shepherd Emanuel Tomljenović

Grand Théâtre de Genève Chorus
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande

ABOUT
This new season opens with one of the grand monuments of Richard Wagner’s oeuvre and one of the greatest love stories of all time: Tristan & Isolde. The genesis of Tristan seems undeniably linked to the private life of its author. Wagner began composing it in Zurich in 1857, while he was staying at the property of his patron, the wealthy banker Otto Wesendonck, and succumbing to the charm of the beautiful Mathilde… who was none other than his host’s wife. Eight years later, he entrusted Tristan‘s premiere to conductor Hans von Bülow, whose wife Cosima had just given birth to a little… Isolde, Richard’s daughter. Wagner sublimates his forbidden loves through the Celtic legend of Tristan and Yseult, which medieval literature elevated to myth status. The score brings the passion between the melancholy knight and the indomitable princess to the point of incandescence, using unresolved chromaticism as a philtre of unfulfilled desire. The ‘infinite melody’ spreading from the voice to the orchestra leads the work almost hypnotically to its final climax: Isolde’s Liebestod, the ultimate sacrifice of love.

After Parsifal in 22-23, Michael Thalheimer will find choice material in Tristan and Isolde for his minimalist aesthetic and love of contrasts. The director, who excels in the art of bringing out the deep humanity of characters, sees in the meeting between Tristan and Isolde an explosion capable of redefining the very contours of the universe. On the stage’s metaphorical ship, immersed in the play of shadows and lights, the star-crossed lovers will traverse all the drama’s strata, punctuated by the obstacles raised between them, but also by the violence of their inner lives. Their single resolution: to dissolve together into a final darkness. Or in the famous words of Nietzche, into a ‘weird and sweet infinity’.

The royal couple – Tristan is nephew to the King of Cornwall, and Isolde the daughter of the King of Ireland – will be played by Gwyn Hughes Jones, the great Welsh tenor and Wagnerian of the first order, and by Elisabet Strid, who dazzled as Senta in the Royal Opera House London’s recent The Flying Dutchman. Surrounding them will be Kristina Stanek’s Brangäne, and Tareq Nazmi in the role of King Marke – following on from his masterful Gurnemanz in Thalheimer’s Parsifal. At the head of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande is conductor Marc Albrecht, who with his deep knowledge of the Wagner repertoire will steer this production with compelling clarity.