The latest release from Deutsche Grammophon in their collaboration with the Bayreuth Festival is a video release of the 2024 Tristan und Isolde.  It’s interesting both as a production/performance and for some technical innovations.

It’s directed by Thorleífur Örn Arnarrson and while I’m not sure I’d go as far as to say there’s a concept it’s visually interesting in a number of ways and there are some quite subtle changes to the action (such as it is).  Act 1 is set on something vaguely ship like and Isolde is wearing an enormous dress that appears to covered in spells or runes or something of that ilk.  It crops up again on her dress in Act 2 and Tristan’s tunic in Act 3.  Both Acts 2 and 3 get a setting that’s something like a steampunk cabinet of curios.  And it’s all very, very dark which seems to be a thing in Bayreuth of late.

  The changes to the action seem, if anything, to downplay any idea of action and so focus us even more intently on the psychology.  There are no fights.  At the end of Act 2 Tristan takes poison and nothing much happens at all when Marke, Brangäne and Melot show up in Act 3.  How Kurwenal gets killed, if indeed he does, is a mystery.  It does succeed in focussing one’s attention on the exchanges between the characters and there’s some pretty good acting by the romantic couple and Marke in his couple of interventions.

The performances are really good and I’m not entirely sure where to start.  I think pride of place goes to conductor Semyon Bychkov and the orchestra.  The reading is both dramatic and lyrical, the tension never flags and the overall sound is glorious; partly that’s the famous Bayreuth acoustic but it’s partly the recording which I’ll come to later.

Andreas Schager and Camilla Nylund as the lovers are great.  Both sing with lyricism and power and have tremendous chemistry.”Sink hineider” and “So, stürben wir” have just the out-of-body quality one wants and it goes right through to the end with a lovely Liebestod.  Günther Groissböck is a superb Marke; dignified and extremely sympathetic.  Christa Mayer as Brangäne and Olafur Sigurdarson as Kurwenal are rock solid and the minor parts are nicely done.  Musically this recording is very satisfying.

And so to the disk package… First off the piece is spread across two Blu-ray disks which not only allows for top notch video quality (and I do think it’s a notch above most Blu-ray releases) but also for three high resolution soundtracks.  The normal LPCM stereo and DTS-HD 5.1 tracks are sampled at 96kHz instead of the usual 48kHz and there’s a (48kHz/24bit) Dolby ATMOS 7.1 channel mix too.  I did a little experiment.  I put the Liebestod on and cycled through stereo, 5.1 and ATMOS tracks.  It was curiously like moving forward in the theatre.  Stereo was solid but flat, 5.1 was a bit more immersive but the ATMOS track felt like being in a house with fairly rich sound.  It wasn’t artificial in the sense of putting one on stage or something but rather like sitting in a good seat.  All three tracks are very crisp and detailed.  Nice job!

Michael Beyer makes good use of the top notch video quality to cope pretty effectively with a seriously dark staging.  The end result is excellent and ungimmicky.  The booklet has a useful conversation with director and conductor as well as a track listing and synopsis.  Subtitle options are German, English, French and Spanish.

All in all, this is a really excellent release.  The staging is fine, the performances are excellent and if you have the gear to take advantage of it the recording is a bit special.

Catalogue information: Deutsche Grammophon Blu-ray DGG 00044007366851