Richard Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde is well known for the challenges it presents for singers, particularly those in the title roles. In any generation, only a few dramatic sopranos and heldentenors have had the right voice types and sheer stamina for this long and complex opera about doomed lovers.
What’s less obvious is that the orchestra faces similar challenges in preparing and playing this immense work, the full score of which runs to more than 650 pages.
Glance at the music, and you’ll discover that while the lead singers get some breaks, the orchestra does not. Musicians have to play the entire length of the opera, which — not counting intermissions — can last a minimum of 3¾ hours but can take up to 4½, depending on the conductor’s tempo choices.
Some of the unsung musical heroes involved in San Francisco Opera’s upcoming production, set to open Saturday, Oct. 19, at the War Memorial Opera House, include the many members of the Opera Orchestra and prompter Matthew Piatt, whose job is to help cue the singers during each performance.
During the opera, Piatt will sit in a tiny box at the foot of the stage and provide the first words for each singer’s entrance, as well as the pitches if needed. “This opera has massive amounts of German text, and it’s obscure German,” he noted. “It’s difficult even for native speakers.”
Piatt prompted last season’s production of Lohengrin, which was Music Director Eun Sun Kim’s first Wagner opera with the company. (As a hallmark of her tenure in San Francisco, Kim intends to conduct one opera by Wagner and one by Giuseppe Verdi each season.) Piatt said that the musical structure of Lohengrin is simpler and more predictable than that of Tristan. Where the former has many big ensembles and a huge amount of choral music, the latter is less formulaic and more harmonically and structurally complex.
“It was kind of mind-blowing,” said oboist Gabriel Young, who joined the Opera Orchestra five years ago, recalling that Lohengrin was the first Wagner opera he ever played in full. “It was on a scale unlike anything I had ever experienced. It’s good to come to Tristan with that understanding.”
Young is now preparing to play principal oboe on Tristan and said that the most difficult part of Wagner is the sheer physicality required.
“My reed is an instrument, the oboe is an instrument, my body is an instrument,” he explained. “Using your body in these hyper-specific ways is a test of endurance and focus and flexibility.”
Preparations for all Opera productions begin far in advance of the rehearsal period. (So far, rehearsals have apparently been smooth for the Opera Orchestra even as its members are in negotiations following the expiration of their contract at the end of September.) Bassist Shinji Eshima — a longtime orchestra member who has played Tristan under several conductors, including former General Director Kurt Herbert Adler and former Music Director Donald Runnicles — noted that Kim is taking some different approaches in rehearsal.
“Sometimes she has the orchestra play pianissimo so that all of the lines are very clear, while she conducts every nuance and dynamic — so that we’re all aware of what we want to hear,” he said.
While Tristan hasn’t been performed by the Opera since 2006, Eshima said that “strangely, a lot of it comes back when you start practicing. There’s muscle memory involved.
“As far as preparing, sure, you need to eat a banana or something before [each performance],” he added, “but playing [Tristan] gives you energy, it gives you strength, and it gives you purpose.”
Veteran principal bassoon Rufus Olivier, who, like Eshima, has been with the Opera Orchestra for more than four decades, added that Kim is “more verbal in rehearsals than some conductors. She has a clear, exact idea of what she wants, and she tells you that, giving you every single detail verbally. When we play, we know what to do, and there’s no guessing.”
That’s particularly helpful given the opera’s vast scope and harmonic fluidity, which reflect the themes at the heart of its text. The title characters’ love comes to them even though Tristan killed Isolde’s fiance in battle, and that love survives Tristan claiming her as a bride for his uncle, King Marke. Multiple levels of betrayal haunt their love, and they seek a union beyond life and beyond death itself. Wagner sets the story of doomed love to music of the greatest intensity and beauty, which Opera performers — musicians and singers alike — say has an enormous impact on them.
“I wish the whole world right now could hear Tristan,” Eshima said. “I think it makes you a better person to experience it.”
This story was first published in Datebook in partnership with the San Francisco Chronicle.
