Tristan And Isolde Go To La Scala: The Video

The annals of opera will record that Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, was the trailblazer who brought high-definition video broadcasts of performances to movie theaters around the world. Following the enormous success of this venture, companies from the San Francisco Opera to La Scala in Milan have embraced the idea.

The videos from La Scala are now being screened in the Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Symphony Space. On Sunday afternoon almost all of the auditorium’s 760 seats were filled for Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” a new production by the renowned director Patrice Chéreau. Introduced last month, this was the company’s first staging of this towering work in nearly 30 years.

The elaborately edited high-definition video, with riveting close-ups, was assembled from the opening night and later performances at La Scala. Central to Mr. Gelb’s conception of the Met’s venture was that broadcasts would be live: audiences in movie houses would vicariously experience the performance with patrons at the Met. Take away the live element and you take away a lot.

Still, the eager audience at Symphony Space was remarkably attentive: during each of the three long acts, there was scant snacking, and few people left their seats. Here, after all, was a chance to see an ambitious production direct from the famed Scala stage. The audience tried gamely to generate that collective spirit of attending the opera.

When the conductor Daniel Barenboim made his first appearance in the pit, the Symphony Space audience applauded warmly. Without any warning or explanation, the orchestra broke into the Italian national anthem, which provoked confused looks among people sitting near me. An older woman, flush with patriotism, stood up during the anthem, blocking the view of a couple seated behind her, who grumbled for her to sit down.

Mr. Barenboim drew a superb performance from the Scala orchestra. The string sound was plush yet clear; the brasses played with mellow richness. Though there was impetuous intensity in Mr. Barenboim’s conception, he took spacious, almost timeless tempos when appropriate, and mostly pulled them off.

Whether because of the audio quality of the video or the surround-sound system at Symphony Space, the balances favored the voices, which came through during impassioned Wagnerian outbursts with ear-piercing loudness. Simply turning down the volume might have helped.

The cast was headed by the veteran German mezzo-soprano Waltraud Meier, an acclaimed Isolde. Though her voice may lack classic beauty and sumptuous sound, she is a probing, ardent and affecting vocal artist, a courageous and vulnerable actress. Though vocally taxed by the role, the English tenor Ian Storey brought a gruff intensity and stalwart presence to his portrayal of Tristan. The American mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung was an ideal Brangäne, balancing molten power with pliant lyricism.

Mr. Chéreau’s staging, which places the opera in some vaguely modern Nordic clime, is visually spare (just industrial-gray brick walls and platforms) and profoundly humane. There are scenes of wrenching tenderness, as when the anguished Irish princess Isolde buries her head in the lap of her devoted attendant Brangäne, as Brangäne, her motherly gray hair pulled back in a bun, tries to convince Isolde that marriage to kindly old King Marke would not be so bad.

During the last act, instead of showing the fatally wounded Tristan and his loyal knight Kurwenal (Gerd Grokowski) as essentially alone against the world, Mr. Chéreau depicts a sickroom at Tristan’s home, where worried knights and ragtag sailors stand guard, eating a bit to keep up strength, alert for signs of the avenging king.

During curtain calls opera buffs at Symphony Space registered their reactions with applause and bravos. Ms. Meier’s ovation was the biggest. Someone should tell her.

The next video from La Scala, “La Traviata,” with Angela Gheorghiu, will be shown on Feb. 13 and 17 at Symphony Space; (212) 864-5400, symphonyspace.org.

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