The dramatic love story unfolds in the second act of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.
For the first time, Gustavo Dudamel conducts the return of this remarkable production of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, directed by Peter Sellars with video by Bill Viola, one of America’s leading visual artists. When the Tristan Project was first performed in 2004, The New York Times hailed it as “a multimedia conception that promised to be so ingenious that listeners traveled long distances to catch it and talked about it for months.” Matching Wagner’s 19th-century desire to expand what opera could be with 21st-century innovation, Viola’s and Sellars’ staging explores the psychological, spiritual, and elemental subtext of the story. This rare opportunity to see the Tristan Project features a globally celebrated cast, headlined by Michael Weinius and Miina-Liisa Värelä.
In the opera, Wagner tells the star-crossed tale of two doomed lovers, but it was his musical setting that caused a revolution. Beginning with the very first notes, including the famed “Tristan chord,” Wagner elicits an endless yearning that mirrors the tumultuous emotional worlds of our heroes, with an innovative harmonic approach that left an unavoidable impact on generations of composers.