A Voyage into Endless Night: Paula M. Bortnichak and Edward A. Bortnichak are carried away by Treliński’s ‘Tristan’ at the Met

Review of Tristan und Isolde, directed Treliński, conducted Rattle, New York Met, 2016.

March 2017, Volume 11, Number 1, 64–7.

Leonardo da Vinci is said to have once remarked that ‘simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’. By that standard, the production of Tristan und Isolde by Mariusz Treliński, at the Metropolitan Opera, is a model of sophisticated storytelling. The evening was a triumph in all respects: an intelligent and probing concept, clear dramaturgy, masterly direction and faultless execution. Wagner’s immortal setting of the ancient tale of the Irish princess and her ‘death-devoted’ hero has been rightly understood by this creative team not as the white-hot story of frustrated passion that it first appears to be, but rather as a profound exploration of the deepest recesses of the soul.