Dudamel Does Peter Sellars/Bill Viola Tristan Project With LA Phil At Disney Hall

In the next two weeks, Maestro Gustavo Dudamel will conduct the LA Philharmonic in performing twice on three consecutive nights (Dec. 9-11; and Dec 15-17), the three acts of Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde in a acclaimed production staged by innovative director Peter Sellars and with videos created by artist Bill Viola. This should be an experience. Each night, each act will be treated as a self-contained concert.

The Sellars/Bill Viola Tristan Project debuted in a production of the LA Phil conducted by Esa Pekka Salonen in 2004, and was then performed in New York, Paris, and again in LA. For this performance, the LA Phil will be joined by the LA Master Choral and a starry international cast that includes Michael Weinius, Miina-Liisa Värelä, and also featuring Eric Owens, Okka von der Damerau, Ryan Speedo Green, and Robert Stahley.

I am very much looking forward to seeing this production, hearing the mysterious “Tristan chord” and the final act’s “Liebestod” love/death aria. I am not a regular Opera attendee but this feels very much like an event.

Based on the medieval myth of the tragic love story of Tristan and Isolde, Wagner’s work expresses longing, a yearning for a love that can not be quenched and that can only be sated by transcendence.

Attending will certainly be an adventure. Wagner was among the first to be both composer and librettist for a work that he called a drama rather than an Opera. Wagner was a poet and his Operas were inspired as much by ancient myths as they were by philosophical concepts.

Wagner wanted to create a “Total Art” in which every aspect of the production meshed. Having Sellars innovative staging and Viola’s video art as part of the production is in keeping with Wagner’s concept (although Wagner believed he alone should dictate even the performers gestures).

Wagner’s Tristan is celebrated for being the first work of “modern” music introducing atonality and other harmonic innovations which were subsequently taken up by other composers.

Wagner’s Tristan was controversial in its day, but also much admired by other artists including Marcel Proust who writes about Wagner and Tristan in particular in his monumental In Search of Lost Time.

Wagner’s work has also been controversial because of Wagner’s antisemitism, his views on so-called “racial purity” and because his music was championed by Hitler and his Nazi regime. Wagner was never banned in Israel but is rarely performed there out of sensitivity to its Holocaust survivor population. However, Wagner’s granddaughter Friedelind who opposed the Nazis and fled Germany was instrumental in reviving his work. Many Jewish artists have separated the man from his art and performed Wagner including conductors Leonard Bernstein and Daniel Barenboim.

So, passengers, fasten your seat belts, we’re going to be in for quite a ride!

For more information or tickets see the LA Phil’s events page for the Tristan Project