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OPERA REVIEW
January 9, 2006
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By Janos Gereben
Tom Busse's ever-adventurous City Concert Opera Orchestra presented Frank Martin's 1941 Le vin herbé ("The poisoned wine") in San Francisco's Jewish Community Center Monday night, clearly proving two points.
First, the Swiss composer wrote beautifully and affectingly for small chorus and chamber orchestra. It is amazing and sad that Martin's music is so rarely heard, and that this chamber opera has never been performed in San Francisco. Clearly influenced by Debussy (with a touch of Bartók) and early Schoenberg — Transfigured Night and quiet passages of Gurrelieder lurk in the mind of the listener throughout — the 100-minute Le vin herbé is a memorable musical experience.
Second, the evening served as a reminder of Richard Wagner's genius. Martin used a noted early 20th century "restoration" of the Tristan legend in "The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, drawn from the best French sources and retold by Joseph Bédier. (The text, "rendered into English by Hilare Belloc" in 1913, is available at www.gutenberg.org/etext/14244.) Wagner had radically modified the story, and thank heaven for that. "Tristan and Isolde" is a literary and pscyhological masterpiece in its cohesion, logic, and impact. The Bédier version, claimed by some as the "real Tristan," is a confused and confusing mess — the opera's impact coming entirely from the music.
The poisoned wine, the elixir of love (and death), comes into play as the result of an accident — a young woman serving it without knowing its magic powers — not at the all the deliberate act by Brangäne (Branghien here, sung by Tonia d'Amelio). Isolde (Iseut, sung by Carole Schaffer) marries King Marke (Marc, sung by Jeffrey Fields), and after a few unhappy years, she is "found out," and is banished to a leper colony as she is escaping with Tristan (John Owens, in a committed performance, using a small voice to its best advantage). There follows years of great, if chaste, love in the wilderness (of the lepers?), a mutual decision to "return" Isolde to King Marke, Tristan's marriage to another Isolde (of the White Hands), the second Isolde's revenge, and so on. In the end, the two lovers ("friends" in this version) die separately, but a briar springs from his tomb, reaches to hers, and the relationship takes on a botanical happy ending. And yet, with all that business (and much more, most of it disconnected), the power of Martin's music — when performed well by the orchestra, as it was tonight — touches the listener, even if the story "doesn't make sense." It certainly does in Wagner's treatment, which both compresses and simplifies.
Martin uses 12 singers as a chorus, a narrating presence as in a Passion, with soloists stepping forward to sing their lines then returning to the chorus. Seven strings and a piano lay down a gorgeous orchestral carpet, with violist Ellen Ruth Rose, cellist Leighton Fong, and Michel Taddei, contrabass, turning in outstanding performances. Busse — who provided approximate, but very helpful supertitles — conducted the work consistently and superbly. Busse also made a brief, but vastly entertaining introduction to the evening, including a startling bit of information. The State of California, he averred, beginning with the new year, requires that exits be pointed out before any public performance. One wonders how that's going to play out in concert halls and opera houses: After all, it's not a matter of just making an announcement; you have to show where the exits are. Will conductors do the deed, as Busse did tonight? I can just imagine Rostropovich — coming to Davies Hall to lead two all-Shostakovich programs — serving as your friendly flight attendant. Yes, Slava, of all people, could do that very well.
(Janos Gereben is a regular contributor to SFCV. His e-mail
address is janosg@gmail.com.)
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Carole Schaffer (Iseut)
John Owens (Tristan)
