Bill Viola
The death of Tristan, from Tristan und Isolde
2004
Disney Hall, Los Angeles

artnet has a feature on The Tristan Project, based on Wagner's Tristan und Isolde involving director Peter Sellars, Los Angeles Philharmonic's musical director Esa Pekka Salonen and the new artistic director of the Paris Opera, Gerard Mortier.

There are some great stills of the video work on the web site.

For those wondering what my favorite recording of the work is, it's this one, recorded "live" (see the explanation on the Amazon page) at the 1966 Bayreuth Festival with Karl Böhm conducting, Birgit Nilsson as Isolde, Wolfgang Windgassen as Tristan, and Christa Ludwig as Brangäne. It is dazzling. I would love to see a film of what it looked like. It was one of the revolutionary minimalist productions by Wieland Wagner, the composer's grandson. If more people knew about his work, they wouldn't be quite so ready to hail Robert Wilson as an innovative genius.

Orchestrally, this Bernstein recording is pretty fascinating too. I haven't heard this Barenboim one, but it's on its way in the mail and I'll get to listen to it soon. We probably have at least 5 recordings of the opera already. I love it so much my web consulting company is called Tristan Media.

If you are an opera (and other classical music) fanatic like me, my favorite weblog for that subject is the DC-based ionarts. The site also covers a lot of other performing arts, plus visual arts, architecture, and interesting antiquities news.

[image from artnet]