Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde is an enduring classic because of the co-equal melding of its story of a doomed extramarital romance, with breathtaking music that expresses unfulfillable desire. Wagner’s music suspends its harmonies and obsessively yearns for a resolution that doesn’t come until the final chord, when both of the lovers are dead.

The new production that the Metropolitan Opera chose to open its season, and to start its series of HD movie presentations, fails because it flagrantly separates those twin achievements.

Director Mariusz Trelinski conceived a modern and militaristic alternative story that brims with off-putting distractions.

I admired Trelinski’s effective production of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle at the Met last year, but he’s way off base with this interpretation.

He took the incidental fact that Isolde travels by ship on her way from Ireland to Cornwall to marry King Marke and made the ship the focus of the entire five-hour enterprise. The atmospheric ten-minute prelude was accompanied by an annoying, repetitious flashing of a rotating sonar screen, and the entire first act concentrated on the inner workings of a modern naval vessel.

Worse yet was Act II where the music evokes hunting horns and the lyrics speak of the king and his men going hunting, yet Trelinski had the action take place on the ship. When Tristan and his beloved are supposed to have a night of rapture alone in a garden, this production has them go down flights of steps into the ship’s dreary storeroom filled with kegs.

Act III was set in a sterile hospital room, where Isolde reaches into a drawer, pulls out a knife and slashes her arm. Others are in the room but no one makes a move to stem the bleeding and save her life.

This is a poor substitution for Wagner’s depiction of a woman who ethereally wills herself to death where she can eternally be together with her lover, as they sang in Act II. Wagner’s music has no hint of violence in this scene, just a yearning, quiet, upward journey that’s counter to what Trelinski pictured.

Such misdirection was even more noticeable in the wide-screen HD screening in movie theaters than it is in the huge Met.

Simon Rattle’s conducting was well-calibrated, without any unusual mannerisms, and was superbly played by the Met orchestra.

The singing was quite good, led by Nina Stemme who is the outstanding Isolde of this generation, though she has nowhere near the vocal transcendence of Kirsten Flagstad or Birgit Nilsson in their times. Stuart Skelton was singing his first Tristan, and did so with a mellow voice rather than a brilliant, clarion one. Ekaterina Gubanova’s mezzo was warm and rich in the role of Brangäne and René Pape was a solid King Marke (clad as an admiral in white uniform).

Strangely for an opera about the physical attraction of lovers, there was no chemistry between Stemme and Skelton. During their long night alone together, from sunset till dawn, there was hardly any embracing and he remained fully clothed in his naval uniform. Keep in mind that half of the reason for this opera’s popularity is its evocation of torrid extra-marital sex.

It’s no coincidence that two conductors most prominently associated with Wagner’s music in the 20th century were Arturo Toscanini and Leopold Stokowski, both of whom were known for their own extra-marital affairs. Attendees at Stokowski concerts when he led the Tristan und Isolde love music—which was very often—would suspect that he had a new mistress and would look to his proscenium box to see what woman was seated there. (Philadelphia Orchestra subscribers from the 1930s told me about this.) 

Even if we accept Trelinski’s concept of people trapped inside a ship, there’s no need to eliminate lust from this opera. 

Stemme demonstrated how well she can act in last season’s Elektra, so we can’t fault her. And there’s no reason to question a middle-aged woman having a torrid affair. Yet Stemme here appeared to be stolid and unimpassioned.

This was the first Met opening night Tristan und Isolde since 1937. What a terrible missing of opportunity!