In recent seasons, under Maestro Peter Mark, Virginia Opera has mounted Elektra, Die Walküre, and now, in February of 2005, Tristan und Isolde—and all of these have been quite accurately announced as “Virginia premieres.”
This means doing a lot with a little. The company’s main home, the Harrison Opera House in Norfolk, is not huge; furthermore, each production tours to Richmond and to the George Mason University campus in Fairfax. These small houses and long travel itineraries impose constraints on the company’s stable of imaginative directors, notably Lillian Groag, director of the three Virginia premieres so far mentioned. (Also, the company made cuts in “Tristan,” notably in the Act I pre-potion confrontation, in Marke’s utterances, and in the Kurwenal-shepherd dialogue in Act III.)
Ms. Groag’s productions are inventive, yet never self-indulgent or “Eurotrashy.” This “Tristan” was an eye-filling, quasi-representational production. It was colorful, too. Frequent lighting cues bathed the scenes in changing hues and helped keep the production moving forward. For the drinking of the potion, for example, the hero and heroine turned simultaneously upstage as Isolde threw the chalice away and the stage went suddenly ultraviolet.
An ark-like structure represented the hull of the ship in Act I. Covered over to hide its industrial nature, it defined the garden in Act II. In Act III, the girders and rivets of the structure were visible once again, marking the edge of the parapet of Kareol. In Act I, the structure was equipped with oars. In Act III it played host to an outsized boar-hunting spear with blood on the end, an enlarged dream-vision of Melot’s spear on which Tristan willingly impaled himself at the end of Act II.
Groag always has her characters move with verismo naturalness. Given the changing standards of onstage explicitness, a “Tristan” director has to consider carefully how to handle the love duet. In this production, nothing physical is underway until the big interruption, well, interrupts. By that point Tristan has removed Isolde’s white outer mantle, but nothing else. Melot later picks up the mantle and (shades of Gobbi’s Scarpia!) sensuously sniffs it.
Marjorie Elinor Dix was a radiant Isolde, vocally and visually. She has sung at the Met—as the voice of the Falcon in Die Frau ohne Schatten, the Second Maid in Elektra, the Priestess in Aida, and various “Valkyries”—and has covered the Composer in Ariadne, Dido in Les troyens, and Marie in Wozzeck. Her voice is a dark-hued soprano (note the mezzo roles in her cover repertory), arguably in the Flagstad tradition, perhaps more reminiscent of Helga Dernesch in her soprano phase. Though it would be improvident for Dix to try Isolde in larger houses just yet, she was fully up to it at the singer-friendly Harrison.
As Tristan, Thomas Rolf Truhitte, started the Feb. 2 performance with his baritonal heldentenor in full form. He seemed to be using a great deal of mezzo forte in Act II, which I took to be a matter of conserving fuel for Act III. In fact, he was fighting a cold. Understudy Daniel Snyder sang Act III from the pit, and Truhitte lip-synched.
Singing “over” a cold may be a matter of controversy in the vocal-coaching community. The late Met mezzo Nell Rankin once sang Amneris over severe laryngitis, but she was something of a goddess among breath-control techies. I had a chance to talk with Truhitte after the Feb. 2 performance, and he maintains that he could indeed sing over a head cold—but that night, his cords were getting coated, and the battle was a losing one.
On Feb. 4, however, he told Maestro Mark unexpectedly that he was back in form for that night’s performance, and my spies tell me he was indeed. I was back in the audience on Feb. 6, and Truhitte was in full near-Melchiorian splendor, with a voice that was huge and dark yet capable of tenderness. A pupil of Claude Heater, Truhitte has made the move toward the Wagnerian repertory slowly, starting with his well-received Siegmund with Virginia Opera in 2002. Since then, he has sung his first Lohengrin in at Spoleto, his first Parsifal in Genoa, and now his first “Tristan.” He is pacing himself right: from “Tristan” at a smaller house—he’s moving this summer to the more lyrical role of Froh in Das Rheingold at a bigger venue—Seattle’s prestigious annual “Ring” cycle.
As Brangäne, Mary Ann Stewart presented a light-toned mezzo (think Ebe Stignani, or Elisabeth Höngen), which alongside Dix’s dark soprano made for minimum distinction of timbre between heroine and maidservant. But most of Wagner’s mezzo roles are of disputed Fach status anyway. Stewart was a fine actress, as well. Her love for Isolde and outrage at Kurwenal’s insults were tangible. Regrettably, her Act II costume made her look like Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca. Every Groag production has one detail that doesn’t work, and here it was Brangäne’s Act II mop cap.
Nmon Ford (the first name is pronounced EN-man) gave us a Kurwenal with a strong and appealing, if slightly rough, baritone, and dramatic power to spare. I have never seen Kurwenal’s rejoicing at his imminent chance to kill Melot acted with more exaltation.
As for Melot, the two performances I saw showed considerable growth by Michael Dailey. A young man with a character-tenor voice, he seemed somewhat uncertain on Feb. 2, doing little with the long non-singing stretches with which Wagner has afflicted this pivotal yet almost silent character. On Feb. 6, by contrast, he was in character every second, full of lust and hypocritical outrage.
Charles Robert Austin’s King Marke was a true vocal treat. Though significant cuts were made in his monologue, his warm bass-baritone held the audience. A Wagner Society of Washington award winner and protégé of Thomas Stewart (not to mention a sometime Marine pilot), Austin is moving in the Wotan direction (his repertory already includes Scarpia, as well as bass roles), and we may hope for many more Hotteresque performances from him.
Maestro Mark is justifiably proud of having prepared two full casts, for a full set of covers. The effort paid off Feb. 2, when, as mentioned, tenor Daniel Snyder, who was cast as the off-stage sailor at the beginning of Act I, had to sing Tristan from the pit in Act III. Truhitte will reach Melchiorian glory first, but the lighter-toned Snyder is also worth watching.
As for Mark and the orchestra, they gave us a Böhm-like performance, free of Furtwänglerian lingering. That’s one valid way of presenting “Tristan,” even if it’s not everyone’s favorite (or mine).
Some Norfolkers complain that Maestro Mark is too much the star of his own performances. True, the high placement of his platform does nothing to diminish his tall frame, and he favors wide gestures that no one would call self-effacing. But he also keeps time rigorously—none of the arm-ballet or cloud-tracing that Astrid Varnay complained of when she sang Isolde under Karajan at Bayreuth—and anyway, why shouldn’t Virginia’s very own opera maestro show a little dash and swagger? Virginia is proud of him, and of the company.
