I have just purchased this (yes I know, a little late) along with "Deborah Polaski / Heidi Brunner / Bertrand De Billy: Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde – Highlights" - putting the two together gives you, if not a nearly complete Tristan, than a version a little closer to one than this alone (but where is Tristan's third act!). While I have still only investigated its surface - and then incompletely - it has both intrigued and delighted me enough to present the following from the publisher for your attention. As I bought it as a digital download, these notes seem to act as a good a set of "booklet notes" as anything else
Deborah Polaski, soprano · Johan Botha, tenor
Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra · Betrand de Billy, conductor
This SACD includes all duets from Tristan und Isolde. It complements the solo recording with highlights from the opera with Deborah Polaski as Isolde (OC 602). Both SACDs together contain almost the entire Isolde-role. Polaski has sung this role in opera houses such as Dresden, Berlin, Salzburg, Vienna, Hamburg and Barcelona, and is accompanied here by conductor Bertrand de Billy. Johan Botha’s artistic home is in Vienna, where he has sung all important roles in his repertoire. In 2003, he was awarded the title Austrian Singer of Merit. Botha appears regularly at the New York MET, the Berlin State Opera, Covent Garden London and at the Salzburg Festival. Bertrand de Billy was principle conductor at the rebuilt Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona from 1999 to 2004. His triumphs here included a Mozart cycle as well as a new production of Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen (Harry Kupfer) and Tristan und Isolde.
TRISTAN UND ISOLDE
In 1865, the lovers Tristan and Isolde – still the most famous couple in the entire German opera literature – set foot on stages throughout the world. But as rapidly as the public came to know the troubles and hardships of the nothing less than monstrous roles of the title figures – so little is actually known, even until the present day, about what moves, or rather, doesn’t move, the two main protagonists. Some of the well-informed can throw Schopenhauer’s name into the discussion, but this means to fall for the composer’s line, the work’s brilliant creator Richard Wagner, who took pains to obscure the situation. But even those with only a fleeting knowledge of Schopenhauer’s philosophy must shake their heads in amazement after pondering Wagner’s texts – no less than the famous philosopher himself must have done as he wordlessly refused Wagner’s obsequious advances, except for a few not very friendly comments in the margins of the “Ring”-script that Wagner had sent him. Although he conceded Wagner some talent as a poet, he felt Wagner should forget about composition.
In any case, the ‘pairing’ of Wagner and Schopenhauer turned out to be a productive misunderstanding. Hans Mayer has already discussed Wagner’s tendency to be an intellectual follower, i.e. the composer’s life-long tendency simply to accumulate ideas from texts of others – regardless of their contexts – that confirmed his own views and to add them to his overall system of thought. Thus, today – more correctly than not – Wagner’s ‘story’ is seen more as a correction of Schopenhauer through the spirit of Feuerbach, or, as has also been sarcastically noted, in Tristan, Schopenhauer is put onto his feet by Wagner through Feuerbach.
And the lovers themselves? If one looks at their two central encounters in the first and second acts, which are documented on this CD, much remains either unsaid, misunderstood – or at best – vague, until the end. Tristan and Isolde constantly talk at cross purposes or simply don’t answer each other’s questions, change the subject and express themselves in decisive moments of the long night-time conversation in the second act just as unclearly as a first-time reader of the text must feel about it.
Deborah Polaski, soprano · Johan Botha, tenor
Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra · Betrand de Billy, conductor
This SACD includes all duets from Tristan und Isolde. It complements the solo recording with highlights from the opera with Deborah Polaski as Isolde (OC 602). Both SACDs together contain almost the entire Isolde-role. Polaski has sung this role in opera houses such as Dresden, Berlin, Salzburg, Vienna, Hamburg and Barcelona, and is accompanied here by conductor Bertrand de Billy. Johan Botha’s artistic home is in Vienna, where he has sung all important roles in his repertoire. In 2003, he was awarded the title Austrian Singer of Merit. Botha appears regularly at the New York MET, the Berlin State Opera, Covent Garden London and at the Salzburg Festival. Bertrand de Billy was principle conductor at the rebuilt Teatro del Liceu in Barcelona from 1999 to 2004. His triumphs here included a Mozart cycle as well as a new production of Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen (Harry Kupfer) and Tristan und Isolde. TRISTAN UND ISOLDE
In 1865, the lovers Tristan and Isolde – still the most famous couple in the entire German opera literature – set foot on stages throughout the world. But as rapidly as the public came to know the troubles and hardships of the nothing less than monstrous roles of the title figures – so little is actually known, even until the present day, about what moves, or rather, doesn’t move, the two main protagonists. Some of the well-informed can throw Schopenhauer’s name into the discussion, but this means to fall for the composer’s line, the work’s brilliant creator Richard Wagner, who took pains to obscure the situation. But even those with only a fleeting knowledge of Schopenhauer’s philosophy must shake their heads in amazement after pondering Wagner’s texts – no less than the famous philosopher himself must have done as he wordlessly refused Wagner’s obsequious advances, except for a few not very friendly comments in the margins of the “Ring”-script that Wagner had sent him. Although he conceded Wagner some talent as a poet, he felt Wagner should forget about composition.
In any case, the ‘pairing’ of Wagner and Schopenhauer turned out to be a productive misunderstanding. Hans Mayer has already discussed Wagner’s tendency to be an intellectual follower, i.e. the composer’s life-long tendency simply to accumulate ideas from texts of others – regardless of their contexts – that confirmed his own views and to add them to his overall system of thought. Thus, today – more correctly than not – Wagner’s ‘story’ is seen more as a correction of Schopenhauer through the spirit of Feuerbach, or, as has also been sarcastically noted, in Tristan, Schopenhauer is put onto his feet by Wagner through Feuerbach.
And the lovers themselves? If one looks at their two central encounters in the first and second acts, which are documented on this CD, much remains either unsaid, misunderstood – or at best – vague, until the end. Tristan and Isolde constantly talk at cross purposes or simply don’t answer each other’s questions, change the subject and express themselves in decisive moments of the long night-time conversation in the second act just as unclearly as a first-time reader of the text must feel about it.
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