The premiere of this Tristan production at the 1993 Bayreuth Festival was
greeted with "that mixture of enthusiastic approbation and predictable
condemnation" (Wolfgang Wagner) which is the usual indicator of success in
Bayreuth. Conducted by Daniel Barenboim with fire and sensitivity, the
production was staged by the late German dramatist Heiner Müller. The sets
were designed by Müller's longtime associate Erich Wonder, and the costumes
by Japanese couturier Yohji Yamamoto. Siegfried Jerusalem as Tristan and
Waltraud Meier as Isolde have consistently drawn enthusiastic acclaim for
their performances, not only in the year of the premiere, but in subsequent
years as well. Müller and Wonder have compressed the monumental story into
a clear and fascinating geometry of love. Wonder created highly evocative
spaces through projections of colors and forms which shift according to the
mood. One widely noted example of Müller's elegant, restrained
interpretation, in which small gestures replace sweeping displays of
passion, is the famous love duet, in which Tristan and Isolde, instead of
embracing rapturously, stand back to back and side by side and touch, ever
so lightly, only the tips of their fingers.
