Desert Song: Sand dominates a ‘Tristan’ at the Maggio Musicale, reports Michael Fuller

Review of Tristan und Isolde, directed Poda, conducted Mehta, Florence, 2014.

November 2014, Volume 8, Number 3, 65–6.

Stefano Poda customarily assumes the role of director, choreographer and designer of sets, costumes and lighting for his stage productions. The set for his new production of Tristan und Isolde at the Maggio Musicale is nothing if not striking. The stage is covered by rippling sand-dunes. Two metres above them, a square walkway hangs suspended from the flies, rising out of sight in Act II. Through its centre, a continuous stream of sand falls onto a large pile stage centre. Rectangular pits open up on either side of the stage, near the front. A white sphere, riven with cracks, hangs at the rear of the stage and is sometimes illuminated like a pale moon. This set is used for all three acts, varied by ever-shifting lighting and the entrances and exits of a host of extras; and yet such is the symbolic potency of all these elements of the staging that the visual aspects of the production never come to feel dull, or exhausted. This is a production rich in memorable imagery. But what might it all mean?