Tristan och Isolde, Tristan und Isolde, Tristan and Isolde: American viewing German opera in Swedish (Part 4)

Nordische Bögen: The Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm

If you've read my earlier posts on seeing Tristan und Isolde in Sweden, you'll remember that I was at pains to find an Anhaltspunkt, a way to get my foot in the door as a first-time spectator-listener. They say that in order to train for a marathon, you don't actually run marathons, or even most-marathons. Instead you run repeatedly for a few miles at a time, and, on the day-of, you just rely on -- or pray desperately for -- other powers and skills to kick in. So might it be with Wagner. Don't think that listening at home will be the same thing as sitting in the theatre. The best preparation might read: Get your Acts together.

And so I did. It really is foolish to ignore an opera's story and plot, or to resist learning it before seeing a performance. "Let it surprise you," I previously thought. Yet with something so artificial as opera, with something so potentially lithic and removed from our daily lives, is there any possible chance of spoilers? Has anyone in the 21st century ever sat before a 19th-century opera and followed the story the way they would an Agatha Christie novel? (Can you imagine watching Tosca and wondering anxiously whether Cavaradossi will die?) Maybe. I hope so, even -- far be it from me to tell someone they're doing it wrong. But not I. Knowing how my own attention works, I now conclude it's silly to think the Handlung will unfold cleanly before your eyes in an art form as aesthetically opulent as opera.





In reality, things unfold after many, many hours spent washing in them and considering them.

The author, opulently considering.

This multi-pronged, many layered experiencing of things -- saturating yourself until you're in the light of the piece's emergent aura, or something -- might be a problem of its own. Pauline Kael, the movie critic, used to argue against seeing a movie multiple times. View it once, her adage went, and capture indelibly a single perfect experience. Keep reliving that experience in your thoughts, your memories, your reviewing. If you view it twice you'll sully that perfect virgin sitting. For a long time I thought her way noble, and indeed there are a few movies I will never see again as long as I live, because once was enough -- perfect -- and there's no need to return (Die Klavierspielerin, Y tu mama tambien). I still like toying with her rule, particularly as it assigns the viewer such a heady task. In the era of Youtube, das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner vernetzten Manipulierbarkeit, what if you only got one shot?

Music is different, but there is still such a thing as overexposure. At many points during Tristan und Isolde I was listening to the selfsame music I had heard at home sitting in bed in front of my laptop in seven-minute segments between e-mails and browsing. This, combined with the acoustic effect of hearing the singing come through beguilingly more lightly than the distant orchestra (which I wrote about before), led to an experience in the theatre that was more intellectual than emotional. I followed Tristan more than I felt it.

It begs the question what is the point of seeing an opera live when you can call it up on the internet at any time. The answer appears obvious: seeing it live brings it literally to life. And it's true. A simpler begged question might be what kind of exposure to the music is the most meaningful in preparation for a live performance. What kind of praying prepares your soul for church?

Oddly, the focus on Swedish vocabulary was a great help, as I initially expected it to be, though I had later thought it would be a distraction. Not that I recognized all that many Swedish words in the supertitles -- my comprehension was around 20-30%. But it gave me a backdrop onto which to pin my attention. The words I did recognize, through sleuthing and memorizing and spontaneous joyous guessing, were like lights pinging from the shore, keeping me inside the music instead of slipping out. The same was true of the German, incidentally: I understood about 50% of the sung German, but that went up to about 70% when I could cross-check the sung German to the Swedish titles.

This whole exercise -- this hour-long game of swinging to and fro on a textual trapeze -- was strangely perfect for occupying the brain, but in a way that didn't close me to the music. It's funny to think that if I were Swedish, or if the supertitles were in English, the language would not have been a struggle, and thus I would have lost one of my 'hooks.' Is there a Goldilocks rule for a certain kind of aesthetic experience? Too foreign and you're lost (I've been in Vietnam for three years and still haven't made it through a traditional hát bội Vietnamese opera). Too familiar and you're not transported. Words deciphered with labor and love, a vehicle to chromatic exaltation: just right.

I'd say it's time your author drew the curtain on these questions for now.




Und trat hinaus.