HIP OPERA, YOU DON’T STOP-UH

How do you put a new spin on opera without making a lame, transparent attempt at being “contemporary”? The answer came with one of the year’s most highly anticipated events in the classical world: the much-ballyhooed Tristan Project, an innovative presentation of Wagner’s epic opera Tristan and Isolde at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center. The production featured projections on a vast screen above the edge of the proscenium, by America’s foremost video artist Bill Viola; staging by the darling of the BAM Next Wave festival crowd, Peter Sellars; and the conductor was Esa-Pekka Salonen, leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic. This was actually a realization of Wagner’s own concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, a “synthesis of the arts” comprising as many aesthetic disciplines as possible. And it was kind of amazing.

The Tristan story itself is riveting if only because it presents with such overwhelming, intoxicating force the absolutely crazy things people do when they’re deeply in love. There are all kinds of fascinating subtexts too: homoeroticism, Schopenhauer, Eros and Thanatos, and countless Jungian archetypes. There’s a big multiple murder scene at the end that recalls Shakespeare and anticipates Scorsese. And of course the music and singing are huge and dramatic — they don’t call it Wagnerian for nothing!

Salonen wrung massive crescendos, fascinating chords (including, of course, the famous “Tristan chord”) and lyrical melodies out of the musicians and the singers were fantastic, right down to secondary characters like King Mark with his eerie bass-baritone, like the voice of death itself. But it was Viola’s night — the imagery traded in powerful, elemental symbolism: Isolde lights a vast spread of votive candles, Tristan strides boldly through a bonfire, the two of them undergo a (very) slow-motion purification ritual, a striking real-time sunrise erupts over countryside, and Tristan’s dead body rises from its bier on a curtain of water falling in reverse. Sure, it was kind of like a music video, but light years more resonant, intelligent and evocative.

Instead of the usual opera experience, in which the audience’s main focal point is the singers on stage, the eye was constantly cycling around to several locations: the singers on stage, the singers and musicians who suddenly appeared on the side and rear balconies, the superscripts, Viola’s projections, and even the animated and graceful ballet of Mr. Salonen. This was absorbing, mesmerizing multi-tasking and it meant that things were never slow, even if it took some getting used to at first.

Right next to me a couple of elderly ladies surveyed the audience during one of the intermissions. “Quite a young audience tonight,” one remarked to the other. “Oh yes,” her friend agreed. This blew me away — the average age in the room was definitely in the vicinity of 60. But I guess for opera that’s quite young. “It must be Salonen,” the first surmised, referring to the conductor’s youth and relatively good looks. But that wasn’t it at all — it was Viola’s projections that drew the kids; multimedia is in, ladies! The Tristan Project might represent the way to refresh the opera audience — bring its presentation into the 21st century.