13895 Wagner News 174 - Wagner Society of England

TRISTAN UND ISOLDE AT AACHEN AND BIRMINGHAM
7th June and 16th June 2012
Paul Dawson-Bowling
Claudia Iten, the Swiss Isolde at Aachen, was simply the best Isolde I have seen and heard
onstage since the young Susan Bullock took the role at English National Opera so
memorably almost ten years ago. The bright gleam of Iten’s highest registers was even
reminiscent of early Birgit Nilsson, but she was also capable of a softness and
vulnerability which lay outside Nilsson’s palette. There was always cream and sweetness
somewhere in Iten’s tone, even at such points of high drama as the end of Act I or the final
bars of the Act II duet. What is more, she always lived the role completely. Her T-shirt,
shaggy cardigan and jeans in Act I made her about the worst dressed person in the theatre,
and these clothes were not exactly convincing as the style of a princess. As we know well,
modern princesses are the height of style and sophistication, but notwithstanding her
downmarket plebeian garb, Claudia Iten was herself absolutely stylish and convincing in
her rage, her frosty hauteur, her tearful sadness, and her total domination of Tristan after
he has finally submitted to her summons. She was the bright star of the evening but she
was prima inter some excellent pares, part of a fine cast whose every member I would
gladly have swapped for their equivalents at Bayreuth two years ago or on the DVD of
those Bayreuth performances.
I would also have swapped some of them for their equivalents in the Welsh
National Opera performance at Birmingham, but the shining exception was Susan
Bickley, the beautiful Birmingham Brangäne whom I would have preferred as Isolde to
Danish Ann Peterson. Admittedly, this lady was having difficulties with pollen counts,
and had to give way to a stand-in for Act III, but I have an uneasy feeling that her oidlyoidly-oidly
vibrato is part of her regular style, as this is nowadays what seems to be
reckoned as proper for Wagner. It is sad that the lustrous purity personified by the cast on
Kempe’s Berlin Die Meistersinger should have given way to a singer style epitomised by
Eva Maria Westbroek who emits about the most rancid, acidulated sound I have heard on
an operatic stage, and yet is engaged again and again at Covent Garden. She will soon
have to be endured there as Sieglinde.
It was characteristic of the two performances that the unknown Aachen Tristan of
Ivar Gilhuus was more refined and convincing than the famous Ben Heppner. Heppner
now seems to have trouble controlling the magnificent but unwieldy instrument which is
his voice, and he also looks portly and post-mature. Ivar Gilhuus also looked mature,
surprisingly like Sviatoslav Richter in the 1960s and 70s, and it was evident that he was
the oldest person on the Aachen stage. Hence it was that while the Marke there was
superb, a mighty bass, the Korean Woong-jo Choi, some better work with make up might
have saved him from looking about one third the age of his purported nephew. Really!
Not only his huge shock of jet black hair but his entire youthful demeanour and even the
way he moved made nonsense of the idea that this was Tristan’s uncle or Cornwall’s weary
old King; Matthew Best at Birmingham was more stately and convincing. It was a further
pleasure at Birmingham to see Philip Joll as Kurwenal and his was now a very grizzled,
senior statesman version of the role, the strongest possible contrast to Tristan’s lean and
athletic young henchman at Aachen, Hrolfur Saemundson. Saemundson was a scrupulous
musician who was plainly not responsible for the weird antics required of him in Act III,
cavorting across the back of the stage and throwing up handfuls water into the air even as
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