Act One: 12th century. At sea on the deck of Tristan's ship during the crossing from Ireland to Cornwall. Tent-like cabin on the fore-deck of a sea-going ship, richly hung with tapestries; at first drawn together upstage; at one side a narrow companion-way leads down to the lower deck of the ship, Isolde on a couch, her face hidden in the cushions. Brangäne, holding a curtain to one side, looking over the rail out to sea.

Act Two: In King Marke's royal castle in Cornwall. A garden with tall trees in front of Isolde's apartments with steps leading up to it at one side. A clear, pleasant summer's night. At the open door is placed a burning torch.

Act Three: Tristan's castle in Brittany. Castle garden. At one side a tall castle building, at the other a low parapet with a look-out post; upstage the castle gate. The location can be seen as being rocky height; through openings the sea and the distant horizon can be seen. The whole scene conveys an impression of being deserted, ill-tended, here and there in poor repair and overgrown. Downstage, inside the wall, Tristan is lying in the shade of a tall lime tree, asleep on a couch, laid out as if lifeless. At his head sits Kurwenal, bent over him in anguish and carefully listening to his breathing. As the curtain goes up there can be heard from outside the gate a shepherd playing a sad, yearning tune on a reed-pipe. At length the shepherd appears over the parapet and looks in with sympathetic interest.

 

 

The following is what happens when I do not read the stage directions in the libretto before listening to the opera. I'll only write about the acts where I imagine things differently from Wagner's stage directions.

Act II:
Tristan and Isolde meet on the ship, for it was the garden in which their love sprouted, and perchance where all would be laid to eternal rest. They sit (or maybe stand, for staging purposes) beneath the mast from which the young sailor sings the opening. The stage shows the ship (most of the stage, not centralised) but also some of the quay.

Act III:
Tristan lies in a bed on the middle floor of the house below, looking out towards the garden in front. (This house is the way I have always imagined Tristan's castle. It was the home of Set Svanholm.) Obviously it needs to be staged somewhat differently: I guess the audience would be looking from inside towards outside: the bed is in front of them and one only sees the second floor, and the garden is at the back, a bit lower.

 

This is what AI imagines:

Staging Tristan and Isolde in a modern airport and passenger plane reframes the opera's core themes of yearning, fate, and forbidden love in a contemporary, high-stakes setting. The sterile, public spaces of air travel heighten the internal drama, contrasting the lovers' intense inner world with the mundane reality of the surrounding crowds.

Act 1: The departure terminal and economy cabin

• The ship becomes the plane: The claustrophobia of Isolde's ship cabin is replaced by the suffocating intimacy and public exposure of an economy-class aircraft cabin. Isolde is a high-profile figure, perhaps a politician or influencer, being flown to meet her intended, King Marke.
• Tristan as a pilot or security: Tristan is the pilot or a senior security officer on the flight, a figure of authority and danger. The air traffic controller or airline staff function as the sailors, singing a jingle about the "wild Irish maid" Isolde, which she takes as a personal insult.
• The love/death potion: Brangäne serves the drink during the flight's meal service. As the cabin lights dim, the lovers drink the potion in their seats. The famous "love potion" moment happens amid the anonymity of strangers, with the cabin crew oblivious to the drama unfolding in the silent space around them.
• The Cornish shore becomes the arrival gate: The landing and arrival at the gate is the moment of destiny, the point of no return when the lovers realize their fate is sealed.

Act 2: The airport lounge and hotel

• Day and night: The airport lounge, or a private room in a hotel suite, stands in for Marke's castle and garden. The lovers' secret meeting in the "night" of their love is held in a liminal, temporary space, away from the scrutiny of Marke's court. The "day" is the watchful eye of King Marke and his entourage.
• The hunting horns: Marke's hunting party could be a paparazzi swarm, or the sounds could be replaced by the constant, intrusive background noise of the airport—the announcements, boarding calls, and security alerts that Brangäne tries to block out.
• The reveal: Melot, a rival pilot or colleague, leads King Marke and his security detail to the hotel suite. Marke, heartbroken, confronts Tristan, perhaps on a public webcam call that exposes the affair to the world.
• The stabbing: Rather than with a sword, Melot can wound Tristan in a more contemporary manner, such as through a betrayal that results in a public incident or a metaphorical career assassination that leaves him "mortally wounded."

Act 3: A hospital room

• Kareol becomes a hospital: Tristan's estate is replaced by a sterile, isolating hospital room. The shepherd's tune is heard through the sterile, institutional setting, perhaps as music played over the PA system.
• Kurwenal as the loyal friend: Kurwenal, now Tristan's loyal colleague, keeps watch over his friend. He reassures Tristan that Isolde is coming, but her "ship" (another plane) is delayed.
• The final moments: Tristan, delirious and in and out of consciousness, is sustained only by his longing for Isolde. As the final, joyful melody is heard, signalling Isolde's arrival, Tristan's life force gives out just as she arrives at his bedside.
• The Liebestod (love-death): As Isolde sings her final aria, she does not die in a mystical union, but rather finds a transcendent understanding of their love and destiny. The stage can incorporate projections, or lighting effects, of their journey and shared moments, showing their love existing beyond their physical deaths.

 

This is what AI imagines:

Staging Tristan and Isolde in a modern airport and passenger plane reframes the opera's core themes of yearning, fate, and forbidden love in a contemporary, high-stakes setting. The sterile, public spaces of air travel heighten the internal drama, contrasting the lovers' intense inner world with the mundane reality of the surrounding crowds.

Act 1: The departure terminal and economy cabin

• The ship becomes the plane: The claustrophobia of Isolde's ship cabin is replaced by the suffocating intimacy and public exposure of an economy-class aircraft cabin. Isolde is a high-profile figure, perhaps a politician or influencer, being flown to meet her intended, King Marke.
• Tristan as a pilot or security: Tristan is the pilot or a senior security officer on the flight, a figure of authority and danger. The air traffic controller or airline staff function as the sailors, singing a jingle about the "wild Irish maid" Isolde, which she takes as a personal insult.
• The love/death potion: Brangäne serves the drink during the flight's meal service. As the cabin lights dim, the lovers drink the potion in their seats. The famous "love potion" moment happens amid the anonymity of strangers, with the cabin crew oblivious to the drama unfolding in the silent space around them.
• The Cornish shore becomes the arrival gate: The landing and arrival at the gate is the moment of destiny, the point of no return when the lovers realize their fate is sealed.

Act 2: The airport lounge and hotel

• Day and night: The airport lounge, or a private room in a hotel suite, stands in for Marke's castle and garden. The lovers' secret meeting in the "night" of their love is held in a liminal, temporary space, away from the scrutiny of Marke's court. The "day" is the watchful eye of King Marke and his entourage.
• The hunting horns: Marke's hunting party could be a paparazzi swarm, or the sounds could be replaced by the constant, intrusive background noise of the airport—the announcements, boarding calls, and security alerts that Brangäne tries to block out.
• The reveal: Melot, a rival pilot or colleague, leads King Marke and his security detail to the hotel suite. Marke, heartbroken, confronts Tristan, perhaps on a public webcam call that exposes the affair to the world.
• The stabbing: Rather than with a sword, Melot can wound Tristan in a more contemporary manner, such as through a betrayal that results in a public incident or a metaphorical career assassination that leaves him "mortally wounded."

Act 3: A hospital room

• Kareol becomes a hospital: Tristan's estate is replaced by a sterile, isolating hospital room. The shepherd's tune is heard through the sterile, institutional setting, perhaps as music played over the PA system.
• Kurwenal as the loyal friend: Kurwenal, now Tristan's loyal colleague, keeps watch over his friend. He reassures Tristan that Isolde is coming, but her "ship" (another plane) is delayed.
• The final moments: Tristan, delirious and in and out of consciousness, is sustained only by his longing for Isolde. As the final, joyful melody is heard, signalling Isolde's arrival, Tristan's life force gives out just as she arrives at his bedside.
• The Liebestod (love-death): As Isolde sings her final aria, she does not die in a mystical union, but rather finds a transcendent understanding of their love and destiny. The stage can incorporate projections, or lighting effects, of their journey and shared moments, showing their love existing beyond their physical deaths.

Apparently that AI has watched Mariinsky Tristan.

 

If I had the time and money, I'd visit parts of rural Ireland that haven't changed in the last 400 years, if they still exist, maybe the Languedoc in southern France--where Wagner walked the hills seeking inspiration for his Parsifal, Brittany, definitely Tintagel in Cornwall & maybe parts of Somerset in England, take tons of photographs, and then come back to my design studio inspired to create sets based upon what I'd seen & felt and sensed. I'd also make copious color notations on the spot (at various times of the day & evening), sketch prolifically, and plein-air paint if I found locations that I felt were particularly redolent of a 12th century Celtic era.

Then, when I had finished, I'd take my designs to the director of the production, who would okay them, only to later claim that he had designed the sets, and that I'd merely done what he told me to do, & given him what he wanted. Then, he'd do the same thing to the lighting designer. That's how the theater usually works.

Otherwise, I think the designer for Wieland Wagner's 1966-1970 Bayreuth Festival production of Tristan und Isolde had the right idea,

But I particularly like what I've seen of the set designs for Karajan's Parsifal on DG; although I'm not sure if these designs are from Bayreuth or Salzburg...

What I would NOT do is modernize the opera by setting it in a contemporary era, or in a much later century than the time period in which Tristan is set (EDIT: like the dreadful 'AI production' outlined above by doctorjohn). Since I usually find such gimmicky productions to be a cop out by directors that don't have enough talent to otherwise bring the opera (or play) fully to life.

 

I think the designer for Wieland Wagner's 1966-1970 Bayreuth Festival production of Tristan und Isolde had the right idea,

Tristan is a drama of psychic states in which the trappings of the "day world" are explicitly considered irrelevant and even hostile by the lovers. A director needs to shift the focus either toward or away from the characters' surroundings, something easily done in film but trickier onstage. Whatever the set may look like, creative and flexible lighting is key, as Adolphe Appia realized back before the turn of the 20th century. I would favor sets that are minimal and somewhat abstract but beautiful in design. From photos, and from the black and white film of the production as transferred to Osaka, Japan in 1967 (see post #7 above), I imagine Wieland Wagner's Bayreuth production from the late 1960s to have been effective.

 

I must say the best staging I’ve seen was Wieland Wagner’s at Osaka - I’d do something as abstract

 

I'd like to stage it in the Australian outback. Isolde gets picked up in a jeep and has a long trip overland to some godforsaken huge ranch in the middle of nowhere with flocks of sheep and an eerie feel to it.

 

Let's go.

Act I.
During the introduction we see a film on the screen: two surgeons at work. One of them reveals a piece of weapon in the patient's head and looks at the audience directly. She can't go on the operation and leaves. The assistant (Brangaene) finishes the work.
The curtain. We see a starship's interior. The sailor sings from an alarm clock. Brangaene opens Isolde's capsule. The action begins. While making her hair she orders Brangaene to wake up Tristan. This can be a basis for female costumes:

Major Hot Lips might be successful too.

Finally, we always can have a white ribbed wifebeater as a basic look.
Tristan can sport something reasonably military, depending on physics of the performer. Optionally, he can have half a scull, including one eye, made of titanium.
Kurvenal is a robot, I think such a solution suggests itself.

Brangaene has a fridge, where bottles with medicines are mixed with a supply of liquors. In the certain scene she adds some anxiolytic in Isolde's personal flask.
During the docking a group of robots is spinning a big wheel in the center.
Act II.
Cornish Rex Space Station.
Tristan and Isolde are in different compartments of the ship. The staged is divided into two parts, or they are shown in different windows among a variety and never meet physically. Weightlessness can be simulated too. Brangaene helps them to use a forbidden channel, while she's working in the opened space. She "flyes" between them during her watch moments. Space phenomena like comets or meteor showers can be shown too.
Finally Marke arrives, only windows with characters are seen. He can be present as a robot with a human head, but with less odious, than in the sample.

His woeful monologue is sung in the center of the stage. During the scene Tristan and Isolde are standing full-back. Melot, another robot, approaches to Tristans compartment and switches something, that he falls. Isolde falls too.
Act III.
Tristan's starship. He's in bandages. Kurwenal is busy about infusions. Shepherd is singing from a monitor (but not through a microphone!). During his suffering, especially when the horn is sounding, an idyllic image of Tristan's house in Bretagne is shown.
Isolde arrives in a light version of a scaphander, with another one for Tristan. The rest come. She realizes that he's dead and pays no attention to the environment. She takes off unneeded sensors and catheters and begins Mild und leise looking in the audience. Robots quietly put a scaphander on Tristan. In the end she closes her helmet and pushes the button. The stage moves back in the darkness, Isolde stays with Tristan in the spotlight. Tizian's final Pietá can be a pattern for their postures.

 

(moltovivace's videos of excerpts of the work)

 

To date the most effective staging I've seen is the René Kollo/Gwyneth Jones Deutsche Oper Berlin DVD which shows the pair in total darkness in the Act 2 Love Duet. Nothing more is needed. Just the void of darkness.

 

Total darkness? Turning the sound off would help more!. Even the kindest critics were forced to admit that Jones sounded quite awful

 

In 2022 Seattle that are really gorgeous production using just projections on the back of the screen on the stage so it was not a very expensive production but it was beautiful

h

8

 

We call it semi-staged performance in Mariinsky.

 

Tristan und Isolde lends itself best to minimalist stagings. The true drama unfolds within the characters’ minds rather than through external events. At this point in his career, Wagner had turned decisively against outward action, which is why almost nothing happens on stage until the final moments of each act. A successful production should therefore mirror the opera’s shifting inner landscapes: the confinement and clashing tensions of Act I, the rapturous ecstasy of Act II, and the bleak desolation of Act III. This is one work where abstraction and modernist restraint serve it far better than traditional realism. The set need only establish the mood, with lighting that evolves in color and intensity to reflect the drama (as Wieland Wagner so brilliantly demonstrated). Above all, the staging should avoid drawing attention to itself, it must be the opposite of a Zeffirelli spectacle, a vessel for the music and psychology rather than a distraction from them.

 

Actually I think it's possible to use a realistic staging if it's a staging that tells us something about our protagonists. Where do they decide to meet in Act II? It doesn't have to be a garden, and their choice says something about them. What is Tristan's castle like in Act III? It says something about his heritage, and perhaps his personality. I think this is the reason for the scenes that I imagined above. If done well, this staging will not draw attention to itself either, and have the same effect of establishing the mood.

 

I don't see any reason why the opera couldn't brought to it's fullest potential in a staging that matches the setting in its conception. I realize at this point it's most probably purely hypothetical -- has anyone alive actually seen a production of the opera that attempts to recreate the characters/settings as described in the opera? I am not aware of any in the past half century, certainly not that have been documented in video. The minimalist/abstract angle on the other hand has been quite commonplace.

I don't disagree of course that there is an "inner" metaphysical drama that counteracts the external actions in stage -- but this is true of all all Wagner's operas to varying degrees. I would also agree that a major theme or a driving force of the plot is the lover's rejection of the "real" world, but there's no reason to my mind why this can't be just as explicit in a production that depicts that real world, with all it's societal hierarchies and political machinations. This doesn't need to contain over the top spectacle: the stage directions provided by Wagner are really quite simple and modest.

On the whole I just don't believe that operas are beet served when critical analysis and thematic interpretation -- stuff that should take place in the audience -- are used as the principles for production design and directorial concepts and justification to disregard the source material. In most cases it takes great art and turns it into bad art, but almost always at least lesser art that at it's very core is at odds with itself. Tristan und Isolde is a rich and powerful drama with external actions and internal motivations that is all contained in the words, music and setting of the original conception. Removing the the words and music from the dramatic context and highlighting their mood through colors and abstractions doesn't bring it to it's full potential to my mind.

I imagine that this trend in opera productions exists because while in other artistic mediums genres adaptation is quite common -- think of how novels or plays are often used as source material that is then updated /modified/expanded upon by screenwriters or directors and turned into films, like Heart of Darkness into Apocalypse now, The Taming of the Shrew into 10 Things I Hate About You, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep into Blade Runner -- with opera there is a desire to use these great artworks of the past to create something new, to provide a new perspective, but they don't want to abandon the music or the text that is tied to it. And so the only thing being recontextualized are the visuals, making either nonsense out of the words or music or making them irrelevant because the context has to be willfully ignored by the audience

Some of the ideas above on this very thread for example are quite interesting and creative, and if we're being turned into an opera, could very well work if a new libretto was written and new music composed to fit it.

 

I don't see any reason why the opera couldn't brought to it's fullest potential in a staging that matches the setting in its conception. I realize at this point it's most probably purely hypothetical -- has anyone alive actually seen a production of the opera that attempts to recreate the characters/settings as described in the opera? I am not aware of any in the past half century, certainly not that have been documented in video. The minimalist/abstract angle on the other hand has been quite commonplace.

I don't disagree of course that there is an "inner" metaphysical drama that counteracts the external actions in stage -- but this is true of all all Wagner's operas to varying degrees. I would also agree that a major theme or a driving force of the plot is the lover's rejection of the "real" world, but there's no reason to my mind why this can't be just as explicit in a production that depicts that real world, with all it's societal hierarchies and political machinations. This doesn't need to contain over the top spectacle: the stage directions provided by Wagner are really quite simple and modest.

On the whole I just don't believe that operas are beet served when critical analysis and thematic interpretation -- stuff that should take place in the audience -- are used as the principles for production design and directorial concepts and justification to disregard the source material. In most cases it takes great art and turns it into bad art, but almost always at least lesser art that at it's very core is at odds with itself. Tristan und Isolde is a rich and powerful drama with external actions and internal motivations that is all contained in the words, music and setting of the original conception. Removing the the words and music from the dramatic context and highlighting their mood through colors and abstractions doesn't bring it to it's full potential to my mind.

I've put in bold the passages from your post that seem to me especially relevant to the "realism vs. abstraction" question. Wagner's staging directions for Tristan are indeed simple and modest. They are so simple and modest that any number of design concepts for sets and costumes would fit them. The opera presents, visible on the stage, almost nothing of "societal hierarchies and political machinations." Those are discussed and implied mostly in dialogue, and most of that occurs in Isolde's narration of backstory events which we don't see. We aren't even given a definite historical period during which the opera is supposed to take place, which might guide us in trying to understand the sociological factors that inform the story. I'm unaware of any writings by Wagner on what century he had in mind, if any. About all we can tell from the opera itself is that it's vaguely medieval, but the specific settings, characters and relationships are conceivable outside the boundaries of that designation.

Given the opera's focus on the characters' ideas and emotions and its lack of concern with specifics of time and place, it shouldn't be surprising that Wagner's own staging directions are so few and so generalized. All a production is really asked to show are three settings: the deck of a ship with a compartment for Isolde, the grounds of a castle with a tower and a burning torch, and a run-down house with a view of the ocean. Wagner imagined a few details which can just as well be imagined differently with no effect on the meaning of what transpires before us. As a man of the theater, he knew that productions would vary in their details, which is surely why he left only enough directions to make the action comprehensible.

It appears to me that Wagner's "original conception" of his opera was very open-ended, leaving plenty of room for directorial creativity. What "original conception" of Tristan do you mean when you use those terms? Are you recommending that productions today look like the premiere in Munich in 1865? How far can we veer from what we can presume to be detailed realism and still maintain artistic integrity, respecting the story, words and music of the opera? I think we agree that that is an important question, and one that many modern opera directors are clearly not bothering to ask when they impose their ideas on works composed in earlier eras.

 

To me, the problem of staging this opera is that it requires singers of immense power who are usually mature, often hefty and look nothing like a young couple. Therefore, I have always thought, as it is a psychological drama, that is it far better heard rather than seen. The only time I have ever seen it on the stage t came across as rather ludicrous.

 

There's the solution that this film is an example of - have real singers record your opera, but do a film with pretty young folk (voice students?) lip-synching:

or this - Sophia Loren lip-synching to Renata Tebald:

 

Some operas can take productions which change the date of the action from the original to the present day . For example La Traviata, Rigoletto, La Boheme, Madama Butterfly , Don Giovanni , Le Nozze di Figaro , Fideiio , Cosi Fan Tutte even Der Rosenkavalier .
But it's extremely difficult to do this with those of Wagner without coming across as impossibly pretentious , arbitrary , capricious . and just plain ridiculous .
Tannhauser, Lohengrin and Die Meistersinger and Parsifal are so deeply caught up with the spirit of the medieval and renaissance periods it's virtual;;y impossible to make them convincing when set in the present day . The Ring takes place in a mythical pagan pre-christian Germanic world .
So many of the productions at Bayreuth and elsewhere in Germany and Europe in our time are just gimmicky and make no sense whatsoever .
In the US the productions have on the whole seemed fairly reasonable .
Of course, there is no one right way to stage and design Wagner operas or operas by other famous composers . But it has become almost impossible to find ones in Europe which are not embarrassingly pretentious, arbitrary and gimmicky .
And today , directors and designers will be attacked by the critics as hopelessly corny old fashioned if they do a Wagner production which is set in the actual time and place of the opera . Film critics and fans today never complain about a film set in ancient Egypt which uses expert Eypytologists to make sure that there aren't a lot of anachronisms in the film's sets and costumes , although these have happened over the decades . Ditto movies set in ancient Rome Greece. "Braveheart" is chock full of historical and other inaccuracies, for example .
But nobody has ever tried to set such movies in the present day .

 

And today , directors and designers will be attacked by the critics as hopelessly corny old fashioned if they do a Wagner production which is set in the actual time and place of the opera .

The directors, designers, and critics would not disfigure Tristan in the way that they do with postmodern "ironic" and "they're crazy" directives if they actually understood what Wagner is trying to communicate or if they received its gift (which they shall not). The delusional ones are the directors, designers, and critics, not Tristan and Isolde or Wagner; they vandalize the Sistine Chapel with spray paint and think they have profounded upon what Michelangelo achieved.

As I said in another thread, true beauty is not subjective or up to individual preferences but is grounded in metaphysical truth. Wagner believed this (and so did Schopenhauer, which then compelled Wagner to stop work on the Ring and write Tristan), and I have come to believe it also.

Something of true beauty is not merely admired for what it is, but because it is the vessel in service to eliciting a much higher, sudden and unexpected aesthetic revelation. It expresses a beauty not of this world but of the world beyond appearances. It reveals not itself, but a truth beyond itself, which exposes the falsity and incompleteness of our everyday perceptions. When such beauty is encountered, tears are shed, not out of sorrow or joy or laughter or any everyday human emotion or worldly experience, but a sublime encounter so overwhelming its experience can barely be tolerated, for next to its perfection it sheds light on all our own and the world's flaws. Tears erupt. You feel unworthy, yet you also wish for it never to leave; both unbearable and irresistible.

To date, I have only come across two such works: Tristan and Parsifal.

Whether this is merely a heightened psychological state or a divine encounter can be debated, but its essence is of a suprarational otherworldly beauty felt only by a tiny minority who have earnestly received the works when offered to them under acceptable conditions. Wagner is rather unique in that he was not only gifted with this state but was also able to craft a portal by which others might experience it, too. In Tristan, he built what neither poets nor musicians alone could do: a door to the sublime from the combined forces of tone and rhyme!

Wagner did not create for stage directors or critics; he gave gifts to the foolish. To receive them, he demands only one thing from people: their complete sincerity (the last thing these postmodernist directors and critics will give up, for they have it not).

 

You post interesting threads consistently.