Tristan Viola-ted

The success story of a celebrity threesome

The joing of forces of big names doesn't always have to be about big bucks, as this recent project by three great artists has shown. Peter Sellars, arguably the most renowned theatrical director around and Esa Pekka-Salonen, one of today's leading conductors, teamed up with Bill Viola, for over thirty years a leading force in the field of video arts. Their version of Tristan and Isolde by Richard Wagner was launched in December of last year and continued to sell out the Walt Disney Concert Hall throughout this year, with the last shows scheduled for May 4th and 7th. With huge screens displaying narrative as well as metaphorical sequences, there was a clear multimedia-feeling to the happening. The reaction to this approach once again demonstrated differences in perception on the two sides of the Atlantic. An article in German weekly Die Zeit has already denounced the interpretation as pure kitsch and claimed many of the sold-outs seats remained untaken after the intermission. Another newspaper, Die Welt, called this "Tristan" banale and claimed it lost all of its appeal after the first act. Meanwhile, American Kludge Magazine spoke of ecstatical feelings and the San Francisco Classical Voice characterised the event as "a Tristan of extraordinary beauty". Let's now hope a DVD production will be able to shed some light into the affair and enlighten all of us who couldn't be there.

Homepage: Esa Pekka Salonen
Homepage: Bill Viola
Source: Die Zeit
Source: Die Welt
Source: Kludge Magazine
Source: San Francisco Classical Voice