[Couchie]

It's pretty much the musical equivalent of crack cocaine. The endless harmonic suspension and longing is enough to drive anybody insane, and when relief finally does come at the end of the Lebestod, it is brief, and almost immediately the hunger grows again for those mystical opening chords of the Act I Prelude....

 

[Couchie]

Is there any DVD out there that has Isolde holding Tristan in her arms as she dies as Wagner intended?

The ones I've seen are awful.

Isolde dies properly in the Kollo/Jones/Friedrich DVD, collapsing upon Tristan's dead body at the end.

Of course it is not clear whether this is due to the inextricable bond of love between them, or simply old age (Gwyneth Jones well past her prime here).

 

[Couchie]

I like.............

This is, to my knowledge, the one and only traditional production on DVD.

 

[Couchie]

Nothing strange or outrageous. Nothing imaginative or exciting either. Shouldn't they do something with light to express Isolde's mounting ecstasy? You'd think Adolphe Appia had never lived and written La mise en scéne du théatre Wagnerien. (Paris, 1891).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolphe_Appia

The staging is simple, which is one of its strengths. The Liebesnacht of Act II has Tristan and Isolde in embrace staring out at the audience in a void of complete darkness, which is one of the more effective presentations that I have seen.

 

[Couchie]

Does it stay dark the whole time?

It would certainly save the theater money.

Look, at least they're not eating spaghetti in a subway station in East Berlin. Can't say the same about the Siegfried I saw last August in Bayreuth.

 

[Couchie]

How did the potion go from Isolde's poison to Brangane's love potion?

Did Isolde subconsciously make a love potion? Or did Brangane switch it?

Or what?

Isolde asks Brangane to prepare the potion. And by "prepare" it, she means pour it from a flask into a goblet (Isolde is lazy). Brangane instead prepares the love potion (I think substituting a harmless antidote would have been a better choice).

 

[Couchie]

Why do you think Brangane gave them a love potion and not just water or something else?

To be honest there isn't much evidence in the opera to suggest that Brangane was a particularly bright girl. While she is the only one equipped with the knowledge of her deed, the revelation of which could bring about a peaceful resolution, she instead is capable of nothing more than wringing her hands, allowing Tristan and Isolde to be caught in Act II (on top of everything else, she keeps a terrible watch).

In fact it could be said that Brangane's keeping the potion secret is directly responsible for the needless deaths of Tristan, Isolde, Melot, Kurwenal, as well as Marke's heartbreak. We see in the end that Marke was in fact understanding after he knew about the potion, which Brangane only told him about after Tristan is mortally wounded and Kurwenal is sent into a triggerhappy frenzy.

 

[Couchie]

The case of Debussy is interesting. His relationship to Wagner's music is best described as "love-hate." He fought against the seductiveness of Wagner, and made numerous critical and derogatory remarks about his aesthetic approach, but knew he couldn't avoid being influenced.

That is utterly parallel with Wagner's relationship with Bellini. Perhaps it's some sort of rite of passage to assassinate your influences.

 

[Couchie]

I am pretty certain that this particular thought never entered Wagner's head when he wrote it.

Are you so sure? It's somewhat hard to believe now that Wagner has been culturally filtered through Nazi and Apocalypse Now machismo, but he was considered effeminate and something of a gay and feminist icon in his own day, Tristan in particular.

 

[Couchie]

This one comes the closest to the written ending you say. I didn't watch it. I read this entire thread and you all discussed the staging two years ago. Paraphrasing your own words, it was just "Nothing outrageous. Nothing imaginative or exciting".

I have this DVD as well. It's definitely the most "traditional" filmed production in existence. It's a case of be careful what you wish for. Wagner's stage instructions are not necessarily the most compelling.