Wagner’s Tristan & Isolde is a great challenge for any contemporary opera company. This opera lasts over four hours long, and the challenge for any creative team is to keep the audience engaged while the singers and orchestra tells the story through their performances of this incredibly emotional music.
We initially created this production for Teatro La Fenice 12 years ago. San Francisco Opera purchased the production in 2022, for remounting in 2024 with the original creative team: director Paul Curran, production designer Robert Innes Hopkins, and myself. We based this production design starting from what we created in Venice. However, we are not believers in “museum shows.” When this team remounts a show, we continue to evolve the show to reflect what we discover during the process, and during the time between productions. The world changes, social views change, technology changes, so why not evolve the art to reflect this evolution?
First, I would like to state that the team at SFO was fantastic! The management and production teams at SFO are among the most collaborative and skilled theatre artists that I have ever worked with. My lighting team of resident lighting director Justin Partier, 1st ALD Madeleine Hebert, 2nd ALD Daniel Friedman, and Deck ALD’s Davida Tkach and Erin Riley, were magnificent.
Paul and I always begin the theater technical production process with a group meeting of the production staff, where he immediately welcomes and encourages the teamwork and synergetic collaboration necessary for an efficient and creative production process. My team, from my assistants to the electrics crew, followed this direction and proved extremely helpful in “being in the process” and solving problems (several times before we even realized there was a problem).
The set design features two large, curved wall pieces that not only create the physical environment but also serves as a sound shell for the singers. Robert cleverly designed these two walls to create the inside hull of the ship in Act I. For Act II the walls turn 180 degrees to create the garden of King Marke’s castle in Act II. In Act III, the walls fly and tilt towards the audience, creating the wrecked ship.
Act I began with Isolde and Brangäne inside the ship sailing towards King Marke’s castle. It is dark with a single practical light bulb swinging, throwing moving shadows of crates and cages.
The backlights that are focused through the portholes very slowly tilt up and down with the movement of the sea. (We were fortunate to have a lot of time to program all this as it all had to be synchronized to the music and movement of the light). The ship’s interior slowly fades up.
There is a moment in Act I when Isolde drinks a potion and everything suddenly goes black (except for the lights through the windows). A very quiet and emotionally magical transition happens in the music that, in typical Wagnerian style, is not only bold and shocking, but transcendent. Then, as Tristan and Isolde slowly crawl to each other toward stage center, a single circle of downlight imperceptibly fades up, reveling the lovers crawling to each other, and finally touching hands.
Soon after, the ship arrives, and the hull splits open to reveal King Marke on a high UC platform lit with a single Robert Juliet 934 SNX HMI.
Act II featured an abstract white tree that I was able to manipulate with color and angle.
We dynamically moved from late afternoon to night with the emotional shift in the music to setup the Tristan and Isolde love duet.
The beautiful voice of Brangäne was emphasized with a simple sidelight reveling her in deep amber between the walls, while the shadows of Tristan and Isolde embracing were projected onto the SR wall.
The overall contrast in color was a balance of the walls, tree, and deck lights with a contrasting color inside the window facings. The ETC LED elliposidals were quite useful for this, and in the other acts as well, creating a spark of color that grounded the emotional “color” of the dramatic moments. At the end of Act II, the walls open to reveal King Marke and his confrontation with Tristan.
The lighting transitions to a very cold and severe atmosphere that brings back memories of Act I, and bridges the emotional arc to the stark Act III atmosphere.
In Act III the two walls are flown above the deck to create the image of the shipwreck on the shore (a metaphor of Tristan’s broken life, as he slowly dies of his wounds.
This is a very dark act that is primarily lit with low cross light and four intense window lights hitting the deck at precisely the correct angles for the action. Finding these angles took a great deal of work to fit the additional movers into the rep plot. We did have to cheat a bit because I would have needed silent lighting drones to make some of the angles. The final moment of the act features Isolde’s magnificent aria standing alone in a single back light from the UC window.
Regarding the plot, I used 12 VL3500 Spots to pierce through the eight windows that were cut into the walls. These movers were high and upstage of the walls to pass through the windows and throw beams of light onto the raked deck. This light metaphor was used throughout the show. I also had 16 x 19-degree ETC Lustr II’s that provided up light to “paint” and color the insides of the window frames (which I used throughout the production.
For front light, I used two Halcyon Platinum and two Mac Ultra Performances in the box booms. On the deck I used two MAC Ultra Performances for front shins, and four Aryton Diablos for low front and side light.
These fixtures not only lit the faces and bodies of the singers, but they were also critical in creating the expressionistic shadows on the walls. I also used the three FOH Robert Juliat Followspots for subtle front light when needed. The lighting design was programmed on an ETC Eos
This production of Tristan & Isolde was a true celebration of Wagner’s emotional music. Working with my creative colleagues made this journey a true artistic experience in collaborative synergy. Isn’t this why we create theatre?