Stanton Champion

For anyone who hasn’t been following the wide world of opera (sit still, this is interesting!), you might have missed the news about The New York Metropolitan Opera’s troubles with Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Tristan has long had a troubled history with it being proclaimed as “unplayable” by Parisian and Viennese orchestras, and finally being premiered in Munich by the great conductor Hans von Bülow (whose wife Wagner was secretly shacking up with at the time).

However the Met’s troubles have reached a whole new level of weird. Their production, completed on Friday, ran correctly only once prompting many to wonder if the entire opera was cursed. To start, tenor Ben Heppner, who was to play the role of Tristan, had to leave after only a few rehearsals. New York doctors initially told him he had a stomach virus, but after returning to Canada for a few days to recover, Heppner’s condition substantially worsened. It wasn’t until seeing a doctor in Toronto that he learned he in fact had an abdominal abscess that required immediate surgery.

Heppner was replaced with John Mac Master, but after suffering from both illness and rejection by critics, he left after one performance. Mac Master was replaced by Gary Lehman, but during the middle of Lehman’s first performance, soprano Deborah Voigt, playing the role of Isolde, fell ill and was replaced by Janice Baird.

Then it got really weird. Voigt returned for her next performance, but Lehman fell from the stage into the prompter’s box after a portion of the set on which he was lying malfunctioned and broke loose. The performance was halted as Lehman was examined by a doctor, and then resumed with Lehman finishing out the rest of the opera.

On Saturday March 22, the Met brought on Robert Dean Smith for his Met premiere. This also happened to be the Saturday matinée performance, meaning it was broadcast worldwide live on the radio and shown in HD in movie theaters around the country. For perhaps the first time, the show went off without a hitch. Reviewers found Smith’s voice a little soft compared to Voigt’s, but for the most part everyone was happy the performance actually worked.

Then it all went to hell again. For the next show, Ben Heppner (remember him? the original tenor) returned…and Deborah Voigt once again fell ill. Like before, she was replaced by Janice Baird, who by now is probably turning out to be a darn good Isolde.

Then, for the last performance, it all worked out. Heppner performed on the stage with Voigt, and for the first time out of six performances, the opera was performed as intended. Ok, so one soprano in a secondary role was sick, but the rest of it came off spectacularly, finally.

Here’s some listening: Isolde’s wonderful finale scene of the opera is here on Youtube, as performed by Waltraud Meier at the Teatro alla Scala. She is singing over the death of Tristan, hallucinating that he is really still alive. Translation here.