*Tristan und Isolde,* Mar 13 2026

Stephanie and I saw Tristan und Isolde at the Met on Mar 13, 2026. It's a new production directed by Yuval Sharon in his Met debut. He's directing Wagner's four-opera Ring Cycle starting in the 2027-28 season so this was an enticing taste of what he might do with that. I was amazed, it was one of the most beautiful and definitely the most thoughtful production I've seen at the Met.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHNnTRV1DP8

It's a measure of how long I've lived in New York (23.5 years) - - this is my third production of Tristan at the Met. It was the most satisfying on every level. The centerpiece of the cast was soprano Lise Davidsen. This was the third time I've heard her - - she was the title heroine in Ariadne auf Naxos in 2022 and she did a recital on the Met stage in 2023. I'm going to mention two great sopranos a bit before my time, Birgit Nilsson and Joan Sutherland, both big stars at the Met and everywhere else in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. I've heard recordings and seen filmed live performances from them but have always heard that there was nothing like being in the presence of the voice in person, the voice had a power and a body that could never be captured in a recording. Davidsen was my only case of that. I heard her in Ariadne and was amazed by the size and thrust of her voice. I saw that production when it was broadcast on PBS and her voice wasn't nearly as impressive. You could tell it was beautiful and sizeable but it was a poor substitute for the genuine article. She's also an intelligent singer and a committed actress. She's playing Brünnhilde in the Met's new Ring, I'm super stoked for that.

Tristan was played by Michael Spyres, who I had not heard before. He has a strong and appealing voice. He sang beautifully throughout and seemed to have no problem with Tristan's long death scene in the final act. Stamina is the name of the game in these Wagner operas and Spyres knew what he was doing. Stephanie accurately said that he had no prayer in competing with Davidsen - - his voice has a warmer texture and is on a more human scale (Davidsen's is superhuman) but he wisely chose not to compete with her, he didn't sing beyond his means. That would be a recipe for disaster. He held his own and gave a beautiful performance. I look forward to hearing him again. One other note: he was significantly shorter than Davidsen, it felt like she was a good six inches taller than he. It felt like they decided not to be bothered by that though maybe Spyres opted to use the design of the set to his advantage - - he and Davidsen were often in an oval-shaped pod and he seemed to find a reason to stand along the edge of the oval so he could look at her eye to eye.

Ryan Speedo Green was King Marke, Isolde's husband and Tristan's uncle. I've heard him a few times, most memorably in Blanchard's Champion. He's rolling out his Wagner roles and is announced to play Wotan in the new Ring so I was eager to hear him in this. He totally delivered. Gorgeous, full, rich, effortless singing, a sure sense of the style, total command of the stage. Have I mentioned how much I'm looking forward to the new Ring?

Ekaterina Gubanova played Isolde's handmaiden-slash-gal pal Brangäne. It's interesting that in the six performances of this opera that I've heard around the world, I've only heard two women in this role: Michelle De Young in Seattle, Chicago, and the Met - - and Gubanova at the Met, Bayreuth, and the Met again. Gubanova is perfect for this part. Her warning aria in the second act is the most ravishingly beautiful thing in the opera, she nails it every time.

There was one person in the cast who didn't thrill me and that was Tomasz Konieczny as Kurwenal, Tristan's wingman. He has a big voice and was singing loud loud loud all the time. Davidsen also has a big voice but sings like an artist, she chooses the moments when she releases the Kraken and sings in a more measured way the rest of the time, sometimes with beguiling delicacy. Konieczny was spewing cannonballs all night long. It made the character seem like a real blowhard, which I suppose makes sense but didn't really work for me. I heard Jordan Shanahan in this part at Bayreuth in August and I wish he'd been doing it at the Met - - he was extraordinary, plenty of oomph in the voice but added moments of tenderness and refinement.

The performance was conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met's music director. I loved his feeling for the piece, it seemed like his default choice was to surge forward rather than linger. This works wonders for Wagner. I have a friend who plays cello in the Met orchestra and she said when James Levine was conducting Tristan she'd sometimes be thinking to herself, "Oh Lord, am I still holding the same note?" You have to realize that stamina is the name of the game with the orchestra as well and a buoyant, bright, forward-moving approach keeps the opera itself sounding fresh all night long. Nézet-Séguin is naturally conducting the new Ring.

Maybe the most important member of the Tristan-to-the-Ring quartet is director Yuval Sharon. It might be blasphemy to put the stage director above two singers and the freaking conductor but a bad production has a longer-lasting impact: you'll have other singers and conductors when the production is revived in the following years but the staging and the design will stay the same.

Sharon created such a beautiful and thoughtful production, he had me asking myself...

What Is the Job of an Opera Director?

1. Delivering the story in a clear and insightful way.

Sometimes an opera director decides they're going to show you how smart they are my improving on what's already there. This sort of thing can produce misguided stagings like the Met's circus-themed Cosi fan Tutte (I left that one at intermission). The director didn't trust the material and didn't trust the audience. He felt he needed to create a distraction because clearly what's there is boring. Not good. Sharon had faith in Wagner and his ability to tell a story and engage the audience. He presented the story with no fuss but also added his own particular point of view.

The best example of this is in the final act, in Tristan's long death scene. He staged it as a surreal, disorienting fever dream. It was a little triggering for me, it brought to mind my own drug-induced dream from my first hospitalization in 2024. Picture this: I was being carried on a bier through the mountains in a Cecil B. De Mille-style Hollywood production number - - dancing girls, hunky spear-carriers, and a nine-foot tall, impossibly slim high priestess wearing nothing but jewels covering her naughty bits and a smoky sapphire organza veil invisibly attached to her blonde wig. She was hovering two feet above the ground, naturally. I remembered this dream very clearly when I woke up and took a while trying to pinpoint who had played the high priestess - - was it Lady Gaga? Charlize Theron? Cher? No, it was the one and only Nicole Kidman.

Anyway, this isn't all about me. Tristan's fever dream wasn't a colorful, pan-ethnic extravaganza, it was a washed-out Bergmanesque expression of his anxiety and guilt. This scene can feel like it goes on forever but Sharon (and Spyres) made it a riveting moment. The staging wasn't diverting, it was illuminating.

2. Creating stage images that support the story and are eye-grabbing.

I read somewhere that Sharon is the first director in Met history to use the full height and width of the proscenium (according to Google, 54 feet wide and 54 feet tall). I honestly don't understand how he did the things he did. I need to explain that the director for a new production works with the designers to create the look and concept of the show and Sharon and his team created something surprising, beautiful to look at, and endlessly inventive. The set was made of overlapping panels which opened and closed like the shutter over the lens on a camera, or the closing mechanism of a portal in a 1970s sci-fi movie. They used the panels to create amazing shapes - - one of the recurring motifs of the first act was a long blade and in the first angry confrontation between Tristan and Isolde they set the panels so it looked like a blade going from the lower left corner of the stage to the upper right corner. Amazing, and like I keep saying, thoughtful. You're creating everything from scratch so why not create things that are meaningful?

3. Engaging the performers.

The chemistry between the performers was palpable. Not just between Tristan and Isolde but between everyone onstage. That doesn't happen on its own, clearly Sharon took the time in rehearsal to built connection in the cast. That doesn't always happen and it makes a big difference.

I want to give a shout out to the designers: I'd seen set designer Es Devlin's work in the Met's Otello, also on Broadway in American Psycho, the musical! Her sets were fascinating, I will never understand how they worked. The costumes weren't so extraordinary but I should mention Clint Ramos as long as I'm mentioning the others. The projection designs by Jason H. Thompson and video designs by Ruth Hogben were fantastic. The lighting by John Torres was tremendously effective in amplifying the mood. The most striking element was a long narrow bar of light that spanned the entire width of the Met stage. As Stephanie said, "It looks like it's coming for you!"

Wagner is my drug of choice but even for me, and even in a sublime performance like this where the music and the theatre were both happening on the highest level, it all gets a little long and boring now and then. I cracked the code in my first experience with Wagner, when the Met showed the Ring on TV in the 80s. I discovered that part of the problem is that when a character asks another character a question the answer is never Yes or No. I'm looking forward to seeing Tristan on TV in six months or so but honestly I'll be using the fast forward button a bit.