Tristan und Isolde at the Met

Michael Spyres as Tristan and Lise Davidsen as Isolde in Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera. Image credit: Karen Almond/Met Opera. Image source: Playbill.

On Saturday 21 March, The Met Live in HD series livestreamed the matinée performance of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde to theaters around the world. The casting generated a huge amount of advance interest, most of it focusing on the Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen as Isolde. The theater I went to in San Francisco, the AMC Kabuki 8, was sold out. The Met production is only the second time Davidsen has sung Isolde, her debut in the role occurring only two months earlier in a different production at the Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.

I can attest that Davidsen has an exciting voice, especially live. In a recital I attended at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley 13 months ago (see "Lise Davidsen in recital"), Davidsen displayed a soprano that was rich and full, tonally accurate and pure, with substantial volume in its upper range. One of her encores in that recital was the Liebestod (Love-Death), Isolde's final aria, accompanied on piano by Malcolm Martineau. Although Martineau is a superb recital accompanist, the performance made me (and probably everyone else in the hall) want to hear her perform the aria with a full Wagnerian orchestra. We'd all have to wait, though: on 1 June 2025 Davidsen announced the birth of twin sons, and only returned to the operatic stage this past winter for the Barcelona run of Tristan und Isolde.

This Met production is the first time tenor Michael Spyres has attempted the punishing role of Tristan, and is also the debut of the commanding bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green in the role of King Marke.

Ryan Speedo Green as King Marke in Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera, with Lise Davidsen (Isolde), Ekaterina Gubanova (Bragäne), Tomasz Konieczny (Kurwenal) and Michael Spyres (Tristan). Image credit: Karen Almond/Met Opera. Image source: Playbill.

Conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met's music director, was also conducting Tristan und Isolde for the first time, and stage director Yuval Sharon had never before grappled with the work's fundamental unstageability or directed an opera on the vastness of the Met stage. The only seasoned veterans in the production were mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova as Isolde's lady-in-waiting Bragäne and bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny as Tristan's loyal knight Kurwenal (Green, Gubanova and Konieczny were all excellent, by the way).

So perhaps not surprisingly the Live in HD experience was a mixed one. First, there were technical glitches in the movie theater, the second time in two tries this season that we've experienced such issues (they also plagued Strauss's Arabella last fall at the AMC Metreon). The image and sound cut out abruptly for the first ten minutes, erasing the all-important Prélude, which introduces the Tristan chord that will finally resolve five hours later at the end of the opera. Then about two-thirds of the way through Act I, the voices in the house-right speakers cut out, making all the vocalists seem like they were standing at our extreme left, no matter where the image suggested they were appearing on stage. (Weirdly, the orchestral aural image seemed to remain centered, suggesting that this might have been a problem with the stage mics at the Met.) Finally, of course, it has to be remembered that I was hearing the opera sung and played into microphones and mixed at the Met before being transmitted to and issuing from the speakers in the movie theater, so I was not hearing what an audience member in the house would have heard, and the aural quality of the voices was changed.

But even taking all the tech issues into account, I had a few hesitations about the performances. Davidsen has a gleaming upper range, but her low notes often got swamped in the orchestral wall of sound. While this might have been a problem with the amplified audio mix, I also detected more of a vibrato in her voice; it seems to have lost some of its former purity. Fundamentally, it felt like her voice is on the lyric side of "lyric-dramatic soprano." While the most lyrical moments of the role were wonderfully sung, including the "Liebestod," I was left wondering whether the role of Isolde was perhaps not a perfect fit for her substantial gifts.

Lise Davidsen as Isolde in the Act III "Liebestod" of Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera. Image credit: Karen Almond/Met Opera. Image source: Playbill.

This seemed an even bigger question with Michael Spyres. His voice has a lovely timbre and wide range—he calls himself a "bari-tenor"—and is always a pleasure to listen to. (We saw him perform live in a jaw-dropping recital of largely Baroque arias at Wigmore Hall in May 2023; see "Music in London and Boston"). However, Tristan and other Wagner tenor roles require a voice that also has what I've seen referred to as "metal" (a steely, stentorian quality) and "thrust" (the ability to cut through the sound of an orchestra at moments of high drama). I'm hardly an expert on the fach system, but Spyres seems more of a lyric tenor or Jugendlicherheldentenor (youthful-sounding heroic tenor) than the mature Wagnerian Heldentenor for which the role of Tristan was written. I will say that he made it to the end of this vocal marathon without sounding fatigued, which demonstrates incredible stamina.

Michael Spyres as Tristan with dancers in Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera. Image credit: Karen Almond/Met Opera. Image source: Playbill.

I just hope that if Davidsen and Spyres are planning to take on more Wagner roles they don't sacrifice their voices' innate beauty and appeal to do so.

Don't get me wrong: I was grateful for the lyrical leanings of the two leads, which resulted in a love duet in Act II was especially ravishing. And this was also the moment when the direction and design of the production worked best: the singers seemed to float in the air like the lovers in a Chagall painting as they sang of their night of rapture. And this is also where Nézet-Séguin's tendency to favor lyrical flow over urgency worked very well indeed.

Lise Davidsen as Isolde and Michael Spyres as Tristan in the Act II love duet of Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera. Image credit: Karen Almond/Met Opera. Image source: Playbill.

In a between-acts interview, Nézet-Séguin talked about the score's oceanic feeling. On the podium he evoked that quality beautifully, and the seascapes that sometimes appeared in Ruth Hogben's video projections matched the surging and ebbing of the music. However, Nézet-Séguin also said that although the score is four hours long, it suspends time. His stately approach to tempi ensured that I was aware of every minute of the performance's four hours (plus two 30-minute intermissions). Not that I didn't appreciate the chance to wallow in some of the most gorgeous music ever written, but I was never swept away into a state of timelessness.

And a key reason I remained generally earth- and chronologically bound throughout the performance was Sharon's direction. He introduced modern-dress doubles for the characters of Tristan and Isolde, who spent much of the opera at a center-stage table below an elevated portal in which most of the action happened. As is almost always true of character doubles, these figures were distracting and entirely unnecessary, as were the dancers added to some scenes. (Did Sharon not think that the drama of the main characters would hold our attention?)

Lise Davidsen as Isolde, Michael Spyres as Tristan and their doubles in Tristan und Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera. Image credit: Karen Almond/Met Opera. Image source: Metropolitan Opera.

Set designer Es Devlin's "portal" playing space was limiting and (except in the love-duet scene) not particularly evocative, and apart from their effective seascapes Hogben's video projections often literalized and trivialized the imagery of the libretto. (A moth drawn to a flame? A broken relationship symbolized by a broken plate? Giant closeups of the singers? Blood spraying in slow motion during the Act III violence? Please.) Finally, Sharon changed the ending: Isolde is shown to have become pregnant during her night of passion with Tristan, and dies in childbirth (like Tristan's mother). This is a Nietzschean eternal return rather than the moment of transcendence and resolution Wagner's "Love-Death" music evokes.

So (technical issues aside) The Met Live in HD production offered a chance to relish Wagner's great music and the wonderful voices of the cast, but all too I found myself closing my eyes to block out the annoying stage images. You'll probably have a chance to come to your own conclusions: this Live in HD production will probably appear on video and may even be broadcast on PBS (though likely not on the San Francisco PBS station, KQED, which seems afraid of all things opera).