Herbert von Karajan and Jon Vickers rehearsing Tristan und Isolde in 1972 / Photo: karajan.org

As we eagerly await the new Tristan and Isolde at the Metropolitan Opera starring Lise Davidsen and Michael Spryes and conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, we might reflect on the director Yuval Sharon’s cautionary assessment of Wagner’s unparalleled achievement in his book A New Philosophy of Opera (2024):

I don’t think Tristan should even be called an opera, since so much transpires that can never by expressed by the singers or production. This is what make it the single hardest work in the traditional repertoire to stage.

With its length (nearly five hours), the almost impossible demands it makes on the performers in terms of vocal range, and the mystical chemistry required between singers, conductor, and orchestra, Tristan is not to be undertaken by the faint of heart and has been a daunting prospect since its inception.

In his gimlet-eyed and droll biography Being Wagner, Simon Callow recounts the tortuous effort to manifest what many regard as the apotheosis of Western art in any form. The first attempt to stage it in Vienna was abandoned after 77 rehearsals due to financial and artistic issues, including, but not limited to, the players’ deeming the music unplayable. After years of desultory efforts, Tristan was finally realized to Wagner’s satisfaction in Munich in 1865, but just weeks after the premiere the Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, died, ostensibly from his exertions performing the role, at the age of twenty-nine. In spite of its troubled beginning, it would become a mainstay of the Bayreuth repertory, inspire countless artists of all genres, and allow performers in the twentieth (and hopefully twenty-first) centuries to achieve immortality through live and recorded performances.

Can the new Met production be one of the greats? Can it rival Nilsson/Windgassen/Bohm at Bayreuth from 1966 or the earlier Flagstad/Suthaus/Furtwangler with the Philharmonia Orchestra at Covent Garden on which so much ink has been spilled? An important benchmark of whether this production will measure up is how Michael Spryes navigates forty plus minutes of voice-shredding singing required by the “Tristan’s Delirium” sequence in Act III, scene one.

Wagner expresses a mash-up of the important metaphysical concerns of Tristan in this scene, including the philosopher Schopenhauer’s worldview that we as humans are prisoners of our will. Wagner uses the word sehnen, to yearn, to express that the only escape from this life sentence of misery is death. (The parallel idea from Buddhism that inner peace can only be achieved through the negation of desire is also present.) This sehnen may also reflect Wagner’s own ceaseless yearning for Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of his supporter and the dedicatee of the Wesendonck Lieder. In the background is the hermaphroditic vision to resolve two opposites to one, day and night, male and female. There are almost too many ideas to unpack.

Tristan was wounded by Melot’s spear at the end of Act II and his faithful servant Kurwenal has brought him back to his ancestral home in Brittany where he hopes to be reunited with Isolde before he dies. He sings a series of long monologues as he loses and regains consciousness. In the penultimate monologue–by no means a traditional aria–Kurwenal tells Tristan, “Noch ist kein Schiff zu sehn!” (“Still no ship in sight!”). We hear again the shepherd’s ancient lament played on the English horn, gently supported by the strings. The tune is Tristan’s madeleine dipped in lime-blossom tea and it unlocks a flood of memories: the death of his parents, his near death and subsequent healing by Isolde that occurred before the opera began, and the love-death potion he drank in Act I. He begins singing softly, the music mirroring gradual recovery of his strength and awareness of his surroundings:

We are in the realm of Greek tragedy, the marriage of words and music that Nietzsche found so compelling and original about Wagner. Tristan ruminates on the death of his mother as she was giving birth to him. He asks himself for what fate he was born to, in other words what is the point of existence, and answers, echoing Schopenhauer:

The English Horn gives way to the strings as they build intensity. Tristan hallucinates about the prior wound that Isolde had healed and the draught that she had given him to drink. He despairs:

He feels the searing heat of the sun on his head, a “brain fever” rages inside him, reminiscent of Ivan Karamazov’s in Dostoevsky’s contemporaneous novel. The music reflects the yearning, building seemingly endlessly until the full force of one hundred plus instruments is brought down in a shattering crescendo. The English Horn returns, supported by the orchestra. Tristan begs for relief from his suffering, recalling again the poisonous potion and sensing that somehow he too is responsible for it. Voice and orchestra swell in unison again, and then begin a dialogue, the horns taking prominence. He curses himself – “Verflucht, wer dich gebrant!” (Cursed be he that prepared you!)–and collapses again into senselessness.

The full range of the heroic tenor is on display: pianissimo at the top of the range, aching legato in the middle, and strength and heft at the bottom as the orchestra brings its full force to bear. Tristan has already sung the love duet in Act II and a few long monologues in Act III. With and with the prospect of the final delirium and the sighting of Isolde’s ship and their reunification still to come, it has to be one of the most treacherous parts of the tenor repertory. Let’s look at five accounts of this monologue by two classic and three recent Tristans to demonstrate the emotional and technical Everest that Michael Spryes will have to climb to be successful in this role.

Jon Vickers

Peter Russell has recently written perceptively and movingly on this site about Jon Vickers as Tristan here. He is surely right about the Vickers/Dernesch/von Karajan studio set (1971) being too mannered and overproduced. But this was my first Tristan, and as happens with first loves — however flawed — for me it is unforgettable. I serendipitously discovered it in the Wagner bin at Streetside Records in St. Louis where I was a graduate student. I dropped a week’s food budget on the counter and headed home to tee it up in my five-disc Sony carousel. My young self was blown away by the force of Vickers’ otherworldly instrument.

He begins gently and then settles into his more insistent middle range, effortlessly holding shimmering notes as the monologue progresses. At the line, “Im Sterben mich zu sehnen, vor Sehnsucht nicht zu sterben!” (While dying to yearn, but not to die of yearning) one can imagine von Karajan stabbing at the open wound with his baton while attempting to bludgeon Vickers with the Berlin players. To no avail. He sings on, his voice soaring above the orchestra, returning again to quiet lyrical passages and then crests one final time as the monologue ends. He never attacks a note, they simply emanate from him. For me, Jon Vickers will always be Tristan.

If you are too young or were too impaired to remember the 1970s, might I suggest dropping a gummy and checking out Vickers in this curiosity with Nilsson as Isolde from 1973. The sound quality is poor, but you get a sense for the physical demands of the role as he sings while crawling around on the stage. The camera technique is my madeleine, prompting a flood of memories not of an opera performance, but of a midnight show of Led Zeppelin’s The Song Remains the Same at the Rockaway Cinema long ago.

Siegfried Jerusalem

If your parents name you Siegfried, they may be signaling that they’d like you to sing some Wagner someday. Siegfried Jerusalem was the heldentenor of choice in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He starred as Siegfried in the memorable Met production of the Ring that was televised on PBS on four successive nights in 1990. Here he is a few years later as Tristan with Daniel Barenboim leading the very same Berlin Philharmonic, liberated from the willful von Karajan.

Jerusalem’s account is admirable. He has a more traditional Heldentenor voice — more head, less chest — than Vickers. There is a pleasant ring to it at the top, and the singing is not forced. What makes this recording a success is the sensitive orchestral accompaniment by Barenboim. He provides support for Jerusalem and exercises restraint over the forces at his command. The words are clearly expressed, as Wagner surely would have wanted.

Stuart Skelton

In 2018 the experienced Australian tenor Stuart Skelton, Nézet-Séguin’s most recent Tristan, sang the role with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra under Asher Fisch. This live recording demonstrates the perilousness of this ten-minute monologue. Skelton’s tone is mellow and at times tenderly beautiful he navigates through the opening minutes of the soliloquy. In the middle section, he falters somewhat, straining on the line “Im Sterben mich zu sehnen” where Vickers soared just above. He soldiers on, as one must do in a live performance, and eventually delivers a strong finish on the line ”Verflucht, wer dich gebrant!”

Roy Cornelius Smith

The American Roy Cornelius Smith, originally from Big Stone Gap, Virginia but now based in Paris and Vienna brings a warm, burnished sound to the role. He sings above with the Janacek Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Robert Reimer from 2020 on the Navona label.

I’m embarrassed to confess that I had never heard of Smith, the Janacek Philharmonic, or Robert Reimer, but I’m glad I know them now. This is an excellent account of the monologue. Smith has a powerful voice that sits in the middle range, and he sings with a sensitivity that the music and libretto require. Robert Reimer is a steady and true partner; the music never overwhelms the singer. This recording is proof to be sure of the depth operatic talent that is out there beyond the big labels and big houses.

Peter Seiffert

Peter Seiffert gave the role a go three years before his untimely death in this 2022 production with the Vienna State Opera under maestro Franz Welser Möst. Unfortunately, he was not up to the task.

From the outset it’s difficult to hear him: either he took the stage directions too literally and thought he was supposed to sound almost dead, or his voice was giving out. I hear a warble or two, some straining, and occasional shouting. I can’t fault Welser Möst, one of the most experienced and sensitive conductors around, or the players of the Vienna Philharmonic. What I think this recording shows is how difficult it is to make this opera work. It’s speculation, but I suspect this production began as a vehicle for the powerhouse soprano Nina Stemme as Isolde. Welser Möst and the Staatsoper are hard to beat; they were simply unable to find a Tristan to match their talents.

I am bullish on Michael Spryes as Tristan and the new production at the Met. He appears to have taken sensible care of his voice as he climbed the Wagner ladder: his account “Mein lieber Schwan” from Lohengrin is impressive. (You can hear him in the complete opera here.) He will need some of the otherworldliness of Vickers, the lyricism of Jerusalem, and the burnished sound of Smith to succeed as Tristan. Lise Davidsen, on the other hand, will have no problem filling the house with her ravishing voice. I saw her at the Met in 2022 as Eva in Meistersinger and even in that understated role I had to pinch myself to believe that what I was hearing was real. Her first outing as Isolde in Barcelona as reviewed by Alex Baker bodes well and Nézet-Séguin should be a steady hand. Will this be a Tristan for the ages? We shall see…