[Met Performance] CID:101420



Tristan und Isolde
Metropolitan Opera House, Mon, February 11, 1929




Tristan und Isolde (183)
Richard Wagner | Richard Wagner
Tristan
Rudolf Laubenthal

Isolde
Gertrude Kappel

Kurwenal
Clarence Whitehill

Brang?ne
Karin Branzell

King Marke
Michael Bohnen

Melot
Arnold Gabor

Sailor's Voice
Max Bloch

Shepherd
George Meader

Steersman
Louis D'Angelo


Conductor
Artur Bodanzky







Review 1:

Review signed M. W. in the New York Tribune

Musical Vitality Marks the Second 'Tristan' of Season

Both in Solo Parts and in Orchestral Work, Wagner's Opera Proves Pleasing

The season's second "Tristan und Isolde" at the Metropolitan last evening disclosed a strange and welcome vitality of performance; a stage peopled by credible human beings in the relentless grip of great tragic drama, and an orchestra, at least temporarily, resuscitated by a measure of flickering enthusiasm in the guiding baton. It was not altogether a good performance, there were barren stretches in the play and mutilated pages in the score, but these lapses were redeemed by certain high points of rapture and power in the interpretation which are seldom reached in a presentation of average routine merit.

Gertrude Kappel, the Isolde, was, last evening, more in the vein of her debut success here in the same role last season than she has been at any time since that event. Her first act more nearly approximates in sweep and play of mood the incomparable Fremstad, than any successor who has walked that stage in later years, and last night she added a second act notable for its tense and passionate eagerness in the earlier scene and the fidelity and beauty of the lyric line in the duet.

Her "Liebestod" was the most plastic and beautiful which she has yet given to us and the voice, after the long and grueling task behind her, remained fresh and radiant to the end. There were moments in the course of the evening when she wavered from pitch and clarity, but these were negligible in view of the admirable whole. As Tristan Mr. Laubenthal is the most acceptable we have, and last evening he, too, seemed to live during those hours actually in Cornwall and in Kareol. The same may be said of Miss Branzell's Brang?ne, Mr. Whitehill's Kurvenal and Mr. Bohnen's Marke, although the last two were not in good voice, and Miss Branzell persistently colors her delivery with a monotony of tonal painting, which belies the sympathetic quality of her acting. Lesser roles were competently performed by Messrs. Meader, Gabor, Bloch and D'Angelo.

Mr. Bodanzky conducted with less jaded interest than has been his custom. A personal ovation for Mme. Kappel and her associates followed the final curtain.



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