Excited anticipation was in the air leading up to The Philadelphia Orchestra’s recent concert production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin had lined up a stellar cast, led by today’s reigning Wagnerians in the title roles: Australian tenor Stuart Skelton and Swedish soprano Nina Stemme. Over the last decade, the two have most often sung these roles opposite one another onstage, with each performance a revelation.
This time, though, would be the last. Stemme, for more than 20 years the world’s preeminent Isolde, would be retiring this signature role after her two performances with Yannick and the Orchestra. Eager operaphiles snapped up their seats. At the end, after Stemme sang Isolde’s transcendent Liebestod — an apotheosis not only of the opera, but of her remarkable history in this role — she was greeted with a thunderous ovation.
Fortunately for WRTI listeners and opera fans, this historic production reaches the airwaves on Saturday, Aug. 30 at 12:30 p.m. And fortunately for me, both Stemme and Skelton were more than willing to reflect on the opera, their roles, their remarkable chemistry when singing together, and how this performance in Philadelphia came to be. We sat down during the week between the two performances for an extended and fascinating conversation.
Listen to the full interview above, find an edited transcript below, and listen to WRTI this Saturday (and beyond) to hear this historic performance of Tristan und Isolde with The Philadelphia Orchestra.
These are signature roles for both of you. And you’ve inhabited them for years, and very often sung them together. I want to ask each of you: who is Isolde, who is Tristan?
Nina Stemme: Well, I have this philosophy that if I tell who I think Isolde is, I sort of restrict myself from my own discoveries, and above all from the possibility for the audience to discover. Because it’s all in the music. And of course she’s a proud young lady — used to be a young lady; nowadays, she’s not that young, when I sing her at least! — but of regal descent. It’s the love story above all that is the interesting thing, and it’s very difficult to just put this multifaceted character in a box. So I think it’s up there for everyone to discover. And I discover something new every time I sing this role.
And when the audience first meets her, she’s a bundle of contradictions, really.
Stemme: Yes. When you meet her first, you can surely say that she is mad. She’s really angry. And this is a huge task when you sing Isolde, because when you’re a young singer, you risk to sing out your voice and just sing yourself apart at the very first scene.
She wants revenge, she’s impassioned, she hates Tristan. Or does she?
Stemme: She wants revenge. No, she hates her own love for Tristan, in this complicated situation when she knows she’s to become a bride of King Marke. But she’s already fallen in love with Tristan long ago when she tried to heal his wound, when he actually killed her fiance.
Complicated.
Stemme: It is complicated.
And then we hear from Tristan and he’s so cool at first.
Stuart Skelton: Well, it’s very interesting what Nina was saying about how it’s all in the music. I have a very similar approach to Tristan. I think he’s a slightly different Tristan every time because the music isn’t… sure, it’s always the same on the page, but it never comes off the page the same way. The way that the music comes off the page every time, and channels through us to the audience, is always a slightly different way. So I think Tristan is always a slightly different version of whoever he is for the audience at any given performance. He comes off cool, I think, because he knows he’s not very good at hiding things.
And he too is in love.
Skelton: Well, that’s the great eternal tragedy and joy of the story. You know, this infernal love potion that they drink at the end of Act One.
As if the love potion were needed, right?
Skelton: Well, I can’t make a definitive statement about it, but I’ve always wondered if it’s just not a potion that gives them permission.
Stemme: Exactly. That’s what I think too.
Skelton: If they think it’s a potion that’s going to kill them, then there’s no harm, no foul in saying what they really think. So when they take it, I don’t think they realize, particularly, that it’s a love potion. In fact, they drink it in full knowledge — in their own minds, of course — that this is going to kill them. And I don’t know that any potion works that quickly. So what we hear at the end of Act One, this outburst of them saying for the first time what has been hidden within them for a long period of time. We are honor and duty-bound not to do or say anything about this thing that exists between us. And I think the potion suddenly gives us permission to do and say things because in 20 minutes we’re going to be dead in a heap, so it doesn’t matter. Then of course, it turns out…
You don’t die.
Skelton: You never, ever assign an amateur to mix your drinks for you. And sadly, the mixologist wasn’t up to scratch.
“Brangäne, get it right!”
Skelton: Getting a love potion instead of a death potion. And it all goes horribly wrong for over four and a half hours.
I want to ask each of you also, how has your approach changed over time? Stuart, what would you say about how Tristan has changed for you?
Skelton: That’s a really good question. I think the thing that has changed for me most over time is just having a much better sense of how to set yourself up so that, when you get to the end of the opera — for Tristan, the last thing he sings, “Isolde!” is also, where humanly possible, the most beautiful thing he sings. And after all of the demands of Act Three, particularly for Tristan. Acts One and Two are not particularly onerous for Tristan. But then he pays that back in Act Three. It’s finding a way to, I’m going to say, pace myself. That’s not quite what I mean, but I don’t have a better description for it. [A way] of knowing exactly — having signposts for your own vocal well-being that if you hit a certain signpost in a particular way, that you know you’re in good shape for the rest of the show. And they can be tiny little things. Like you get to a certain point in Act Two. You go, “Ooh, this particular phrase feels really, really easy tonight.” You know, that I don’t have to think about it for the rest of the night. And if you get to a particular phrase towards the end of that big Act Two love duet, and you think, “OK, I had to really think about how to do this little bit here.” Then you know, when you get to Act Three, you’re going to have to just be thoughtful and mindful about how you progress through Act Three. Rather than when I first started singing it, singing it like you’re going to retire.
Right. Give it your all?
Skelton: Yeah. All of the time, you know?
Did you have that way of doing it, Nina, when you started?
Stemme: I started [Isolde] with a much more lyric voice than I have now.
Because your voice has grown over time?
Stemme: It has grown, it has developed, or whatever you call it. I love big lyric voices, but now my temperament and my voice has changed. So I started Isolde knowing that I have to be careful and find all the piano places in the part. And I also studied it with the same coach that [prepared the singer for] this part for Carlos Kleiber, and that was Dame Margaret Price, who was also a very lyric, but very smart and very musical singer. So I knew — and this professor, who’s not around anymore, he also [prepared] lots of things with Lucia Popp, who had her special way of setting a note in forte and then drawing it back. Pulling it back in piano, which I don’t need to do — I can barely do it anymore because my voice has changed with the bigger repertoire. So when I started Isolde, I enjoyed being a young princess looking for vengeance and then wanting to die with the man she really loved.
Such youthful emotions, aren’t they?
Stemme: Very, it is really, and I still have of course that feeling when it comes to emotions. But I’ve got different colors in my voice now. So yes, you just have to cope with it. And I was quite scared of the first act because I have so much to sing. And the tessitura, the way the part lies, is quite low. It can almost be sung by a mezzo-soprano, and that was not my voice at the time, so I was always using the first act as a warmup for the second act, and then I just went for it. Sometimes I went a bit too far — and then you have to wait [through] the intermission and 45 or 50 minutes of the third act when Tristan sings, and my voice could just collapse. So I had to warm up again. At the beginning I had to eat a decent meal because I was so hungry. That doesn’t take as many calories anymore, luckily! But I can totally agree with what [Stuart was] saying about how I hit different phrases. Will it last until the end or not? You can feel that sometimes, because you have to tread this journey just through being as humble as you can. And it's a journey, every night. Every day you sing these roles, you never know what's going to happen: how your voice will react if it’s dry, if there’s pollen, if the orchestra plays too loud, or…
A big house, or a small house….
Stemme: Yeah, a small house is more difficult, strangely enough. I don’t know why, but it has to do with the flow of the breath, I’m sure. You can just let the voice go, over a bigger orchestra in a bigger hall. And this is also with the experience that we know that if we push it, we sort of shrink our overtones and won’t be heard more. We just have to give the resonance as much space….
Never louder than beautiful.
Skelton: Yeah. Never louder than lovely. And one of the things is letting physics do the work for you. There’s so much of the resonance in the hall itself and physically for us in the body. Let it do all the work, or as much of the work as you can let it do. Because if you rely on the musculature all the time, they’re gonna get tired.
This is something that occurred to me as I was listening in the hall. Here in Marian Anderson Hall, you’re in a concert production. You’re positioned above the orchestra and it’s amazing what happens when your voice can just sail out above the orchestra. I don’t know how that's different from your perspective from being in an opera house, but it certainly works for the audience.
Stemme: Oh yes. It’s quite similar to an opera house.
Skelton: Yeah, I mean, because we’re quite a long way [above the orchestra], although the orchestra is on the platform, not under the stage.
Right. I guess that’s the distinction I’m thinking of.
Skelton: But because, as you say, we’re elevated, the distance between us and the orchestra is not dissimilar. So we get a very similar sensation of what’s there.
You both have referred to the idea of pacing, whether or not that’s quite the right word, but this idea that for you, Nina, Isolde has her huge workout in that first act. And you Stuart have to be aware always that this amazing tour de force is awaiting you in the third act.
Skelton: Yeah. And the reason I don’t say pacing — well, pacing is as close to the right word as I can think of. And the reason is, when I first started preparing it, I was thinking of saving. I’d worked with some coaches who said, “you need to save it here.” And while I was preparing it, I realized that saving it wasn’t helping. Not because of saving, the problem was the way I was going about saving. It’s not about saving. And that’s why I developed this little system of signposts. Just a quick sub-routine that’s running in the brain. In this phrase here, checking in: “Yep. I’m in terrific shape.” Or, “OK. I’m getting to this point and I’m starting to feel like I’ve been singing a little bit.” When I get to the next signpost, the next checkpoint, where am I up to? So it’s really being mindful of what’s yet to come. And the way that it ended up working best, I think, was every time I start, at any point in the opera, I think, “I just have this page, or page and a half, or two pages to sing, and then I’m done.” And I just do that 48 times. Or 50. “Just this bit, then I'm done.” And then I get to Act Three and I'm like, “Just this little bit and then I’m done.” So I can sing this like it’s the only thing I have to sing. And then you don’t save, and it actually ends up being healthier. Because if you save, you tend to close things down or hold onto things that you don’t need to hold onto.
Kind of tightening....
Skelton: And when I was trying to save things, I was like, “I’m trying to save and it’s not helping me.” So I just said, “Don’t save. Just sing this bit and then you’re done for the rest of the night.” And then, “Oh, then there’s just this bit.” Then, “One more bit.” And then finally you’re right, and it is the last bit, and then you actually are done. And then you realize, “Oh, I actually am done. I’m not lying to myself anymore.” True. I’ve just done “Isolde!” [sings] and I'm done and I can stop singing. And that catches me by surprise.
Nina, you've been nodding. Do you, do you think of it that way?
Stemme: Yes. Maybe not like every other page, or whatever he said. But I have a few signposts that I check in with myself, in my warmup room. Soft spots and the more dramatic singing. I try to stay as slim as I can and do the right thing. And many times it saves me to start with the lower parts and just get them very calm and flowing, and then I work myself up. And then as the show goes on, I can feel, “OK, that went well.” And I have a few corners that are difficult to turn and when I am not happy really, but OK. Satisfied enough with them, I feel I can go on and I can feel more relaxed. It’s also that I have the whole journey in my head already from the beginning: How will the last notes sound? Not that I can control that, but if I feel that, “OK, the way I sound now, I can sustain this quality throughout the show.”
It’s amazing to think that as you start, you’re thinking three and a half, four hours from that moment, this is what it must sound like at that moment.
Stemme: It is scary, yes!
I want to get back to the idea of this love that [Tristan and Isolde] have given themselves, thanks to the potion, permission to feel for a few moments — or what they think is a few moments. Love and death from that moment are inextricable throughout this opera. I wonder how you think of that in the three different acts. Like, where they are at the end of Act One is different from where they are, in Act Two, when then they’re really trying to essentially consummate or find some way of being together.
Stemme: Yeah. And they do find a way.
They do.
Stemme: But in the beginning, since Isolde starts the whole show, after the young sailor, it is a very complicated situation because she knows that she’s betrayed her country by saving the man that she actually loves. So the love potion for Isolde is not an issue really, because the way she says, “He looked me in the eyes” — she just melts as she sings that.
And her betrayal has already happened.
Stemme: Yes, exactly.
Skelton: It’s a really interesting thing about that, when you said to Brangäne, “I healed him so I could send him home, because the look he gave me still haunts me. And I healed him to get him out of here, so that look didn't plague me anymore.”
Stemme: Because I was not allowed to fall in love. But then you have the strongest love motif again, repeated underneath. She says that so you can hear in the orchestra that she’s actually lying to herself. But she doesn’t trust that Tristan would ever love her. Also, they are from different classes in society. Tristan is a superhero and a warrior, a knight and the best friend of the King — but I’m still a royal.
A princess.
Skelton: And he’s French. I mean, we’re talking about Cornwall and Ireland and he’s French. And this is prior to 1066, so he’s not yet nobility. [laughter]
So Isolde’s betrayal, we’ve been saying, is already an established thing at the beginning, and then comes Tristan’s betrayal of King Marke and how painful that is.
Skelton: It is, it really is. And it’s not that Tristan musically expresses or feels the betrayal of the king, but the 11 minutes that Wagner gives King Marke sing in Act Two with that bass clarinet, drives straight through you.
It’s all questions, that soliloquy.
Skelton: And that the way that King Marke in this particular case, Tareq [Nazmi] and the bass clarinet play off each other, it just runs straight through you. And I feel awful, I really do — I feel terrible, because you just don’t have a choice. Wagner doesn’t leave you an option but to feel like you are the worst dirtbag on the face of the planet, because of what you know has happened. And the way Wagner does that — I don’t think there is an opera composer on the planet that does that better than he does it. I mean, he gets into your brain, and manipulates stuff in your brain in a way that you don't quite understand. Wagner does that better than anyone.
Stemme: Well, he also said that if you really have listened, and taken Tristan and Isolde into yourself, you will leave the concert hall or the opera feeling crazy. Because you don’t know what to do. And it’s also all these nonverbal messages that he sends through the orchestration, through the harmonies that never come to a resolution until the very, very end. And it does something to us emotionally where we can’t control ourselves. And this Wagner realized as he was composing. It’s amazing.
When you’re in this world, it must be especially helpful to be singing together with someone that you’ve partnered in this opera so many times as you two have. Did I hear, Stuart, that half the times you've sung Tristan…?
Skelton: More than half have been with Nina, and of course Nina was singing it for 10 years before I even started singing this role. So for me to have as many performances as I have, more than half — I haven’t done the mathematics, but 65% at least — with the greatest Isolde on the planet has been pretty special from my point of view. And to have, again, as you say, somebody not only as a partner on stage, but somebody who inhabits my musical values? That is a gift to what, ten years ago, was an inexperienced Tristan, who was working with still the greatest Isolde on the planet. And just immediately recognizing this person is taking care of the little, tiny, minuscule musical values of this thing in a way that I would aspire to.
Stemme: The same. I was so happy when we started to sing these roles together because [Stuart has] this emotional and musical intelligence and really knows the German language — because there’s just as much music in the language that Wagner also composed, more or less, it’s quite amazing. And also that you can throw phrases at each other, especially in that fifth scene in the first act. And it’s so annoying the way Stuart’s Tristan answers Isolde! — and that’s exactly what should happen.
Because he is annoying you!
Stemme: He sure is. Or, he’s annoying my Isolde, and my private person rejoices because: “Yes! I got him!” or “No, he got me!” And this is really exciting.
Skelton: That whole wordplay in the fifth of scene of Act One, where they’re really sparring with each other and she throws a couple of really good left jabs.
Verbal left jabs…
Skelton: Exactly, and every now and then he just ducks out the way. And it’s fabulous. Because we’re both so familiar with the language and familiar with each other’s performances, Isolde will say something and he’ll go, “Oh, oh. Is that the case?” And it’s so much fun to do that, and of course she’s getting under his skin too, actually. She says, “Oh, that’s right. That’s right. While you were lying sick in a bed.” I’m like, “Yeah, don’t mention that bit.”
Stemme: And you were lying to me about your name, thank you very much.
Skelton: I know I was lying to you. Yeah, I didn’t do a good job of lying. I just, like, moved some of the letters around.
It makes me wonder, you’ve been in so many different productions together, staged productions and so many different concepts, right? And then, here you are in a concert situation, with all the experience that you have in these roles, and then you just get to interact like that. I mean, there was stage direction to a degree for this, but really it is just you drawing on your experience of these roles and your long experience singing together. And the dramatic tension is palpable.
Skelton: The dramatic tension is in the music.
Stemme: Yes.
Skelton: I mean you, we, could be standing against a black wall wearing literally dark gray sackcloth. And if you give the musical values as a singer that Wagner wrote, and you give the musical values as an orchestra and a conductor that Wagner put in the score for you, it is already an incredible piece of theater. Just for what comes off the page.
Stemme: Absolutely. I agree. But it’s also the tension that the situations that we are in, and it’s also a physical tension from our bodies through the music, over the orchestra. Which sort of feels like a production, like someone actually directed us.
Skelton: Yeah. And [Wagner] does compose for each of us, in a way. At some point in the opera, he composes you to be at the end of your emotional tether. And he writes it in. I mean there’s this [moment] in Act Three, just before Tristan collapses on the floor. If he wrote another four bars, there’s not a person on the planet who could sing it. But just when he knows you are physically and vocally at the end of your current rope, he has you collapse on the floor for two full pages. And you sit there, lying on the floor, breathing, getting your body temperature down, [getting] ready to go again. But that’s the sub-routine.
After all, you are mortally wounded, so…
Skelton: But he really does, he vocally takes you to the wall and says, “Here’s the wall. I’m gonna drop you two inches short.” And that’s the genius of the guy, is that he knew exactly how far to push it. He really does push you. And you go, “The wall is coming at me very, very fast and out of nowhere.” Two inches short, you stop and collapse, and go, “OK, let's just regather.” I think the way he does that is frightening in how accurate it is, and sublime in the way that he forces you as a singer, as a performer, to just be hanging on by your fingernails for dear life — and then, he lets you go. It’s utterly remarkable.
Stemme: It’s interesting, but I think it’s also that we have learned from our predecessors, the colleagues from former times, bearing in mind that the first Tristan actually sang on a cold, and then he died three weeks after the opening night.
Oh my goodness.
Stemme: So we have to be careful, because these roles are actually physically and mentally dangerous. But we are also learning from our predecessors, and knowing it’s like a marathon. Or if you go downhill skiing, you need to know when’s the next turn and how, like we said before, how does it go? And I think we’ve learned this with time and listening and learning from other colleagues’ advantages and mistakes. And this is a very interesting process. So now after 10 or 22 years we almost take some things for granted — and that is not the case, I just want to be clear! It’s not so easy.
Skelton: But it is true. Last Sunday, I was sort of three-quarters of the way through Act Three, thinking, “I must have more to go than I think, because this actually feels really comfortable. What have I forgotten? Have I missed something?” Or I’ve blanked on a couple of pages and any minute now they’re going to arrive and I won’t realize. And then I got to the end and I went, “Oh, that’s literally it.” I mean, what’s that famous story? It’s never the speed that kills, it’s that abrupt stop at the end that does all the damage, you know?
Stemme: And that also, of course, has to do with which orchestra and which conductor we are doing this with.
Skelton: Absolutely.
And you are both making your debuts with this orchestra.
Stemme: Yes! And Yannick carries us through the show. And the orchestra. It’s amazing, really. I feel totally blessed being able to sing my last Isoldes here in Philadelphia with this orchestra, with Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
And you’re going just where I was going to ask you, which is how does it feel to be singing your last Isolde – and it’s sounding still so fresh. It must be hard to let her go.
Stemme: I don't think so, actually. I don’t think it’s hard to let her go because this is a decision that I made actually more than five years ago, that I was not going to sing any of these roles after 60. Then the little pandemic came and I decided, “OK.” So I thought I had sung my last Isolde like two years ago. I don’t remember when the request from The Philadelphia Orchestra came, but when I got that — wow. There was no way I could say no. I just had to stay in shape and do my best because it was a dream coming true.
So, the right time.
Skelton: Well, I’m gonna be sad.
I was going to ask, Stuart… How are you going to feel?
Skelton: I’ll miss my best Isolde partner ever. But mind you, I’m not all that far away from 60, to be honest. So it won’t be all that long before I’m sort of looking to pass on whatever I’ve gleaned from years of singing on to whoever’s in the wings. And there are always some really great singers ready who are coming in, coming through. And the really good Tristans, the really good — that voice type, you don’t hear from them at 25. You don’t know their names at 29. You don’t know who they are yet. And then, suddenly, somebody who’s in their late thirties or early forties does it. And you go, “There’s one.”
Well, we are very fortunate, Nina Stemme and Stuart Skelton, that you have let us hear your Tristan and Isolde. Thank you so much.
Stemme: Thank you.
Skelton: An absolute pleasure. Thank you.
