Clemens Bieber

Wagner's erotic opera in a production by the German Opera of Berlin under the direction of Gotz Friedrich, with music conducted by Jiri Kout. Recorded at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

Grand tragic opera in 5 acts by Richard Wagner. Libretto by Richard Wagner after the homonymous novel by Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton.

Since the 1990s, Christoph Marthaler and his congenial stage and costume designer Anna Viebrock have caused a sensation with highly musical and atmospheric productions of plays and operas. It was only a matter of time, then, before this directing team was also invited to the Bayreuth Festival. Marthaler's style of radical deceleration proved ideally suited to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in this production – with Viebrock's sober yet poetic sets – unveiled in 2005. In the 2009 revival documented here, Robert Dean Smith and Iréne Theorin were joined in the title roles by Robert Holl, one of the great basses of his generation, who sang the role of King Marke.