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This is a unique opportunity to experience the immersive sensuality of Bill Viola’s stunning video-imagery, set to Wagner’s core-shaking music.
In this famous legend, a love-potion binds Tristan to Isolde. Their yearning for unattainable unity reaches its rapturous resolution in a love which can only be fulfilled by death.
“[I] came away in something like [a] state of dazed bliss… the images seemed to arise from the subconscious of the score, from the mysterious nexus where words become notes.” (Alex Ross, The New Yorker)
On stage at the Four Seasons Centre, 145 Queen St. W., Toronto. Performance time is approximately four hours, 50 minutes including two intermissions. Sung in German with English SURTITLES™.
Conductor: Jiří Bělohlávek Director: Peter Sellars Video: Bill Viola Costume Designer: Martin Pakledinaz
Tristan: Ben Heppner / Burkhard Fritz Isolde: Melanie Diener / Margaret Jane Wray Brangäne: Daveda Karanas Kurwenal: Alan Held
Recreation of the Opéra national de Paris Production
Video still of Isolde's Death by Bill Viola, from the Opéra national de Paris production of Tristan und Isolde. Photo: Kira Perov © 2005
Production Sponsor
Generously underwritten by Lisa Balfour Bowen and Walter M. Bowen; Philip Deck and Kimberley Bozak; Donald O’Born; Colleen Sexsmith; and Sandra L. Simpson.
Please note special start times.