Reflections on Tristan
Last night's performance of Tristan and Isolde at English National Opera was quite enthralling with Elizabeth Connell's assumption of the female title role the most complete I have ever witnessed - her leibestod at once intimate and overwhelming.
Throughout, stage performers, orchestra and conductor worked to create an integrated and intellectually stimulating evening. David Alden's decision to set the piece in a theatre of the mind (literally so in the first act with its decor based on a dilapidated 1950s Sadler's Wells Theatre) paid dividends in the final act but completely stripped the first act of the necessary symbolism of its happening on water.
Well worth the admission price but still I can honestly say that I had a more enjoyable night out a few weeks ago at Samson et Dalila which, by all standards of critical assessment, is a much inferior piece. Why?
Well, I think that it's something to do with the Germanic tendency to intellectualism. Earlier in the week, I had glibly characterised Tristan as six hours of philosophising about love and death with no shagging. Conversely, I suppose you could characterise, say, Tosca as three hours of shagging, love and death with no philosophising. And, frankly, at this stage in my life, I rather go for the latter.
Somewhere deep in Act Two, where the music is at its most seductive, Tristan and Isolde were singing about total immersion in a spiritual union and loss of self and I thought This is cobblers. Why don't they stop talking about it and do something? And, ultimately, I think that this is why I prefer Italian opera. There's more pelvis in it.
On the Tube home, I got to musing about the total immersion and loss of self shit and pondered for a while about that gay thang that one of the great bonuses of same sex love is that empathy between partners is easier than when it has to take place across the gender divide. And whatever the truth of that, I still think that I have to face up to the fact that my life is hardly a shining example of someone getting it together with the most appropriate of people.
Anyhow, it occurred to me that the whole thing goes even further if you share the same name which got me considering the Jameses. And, in the performance programme, there was some verse by the 13th century poet Gottfried von Strassburg and that, added to the excesses of Wagner's music, got the poetic juices going and I wrote the following.
The Jameses
Now, feel my kiss upon your brow
for you are James and I am James
and we shall be one James together;
two souls, one love throughout all time.
For I am yours and you are mine
in constancy and truth forever.
Our love's beyond all need for names
one James for future, past and now.
It's the first piece of properly worked poesy that I've accomplished in over a decade, so I'm rather pleased with it. I've no idea whether it's appropriate for the Jameses in actuality but I quite like the piece's exploration of an idealised notion of 2 people/1 name; 2 souls/1 love. And it takes less than 6 hours to read.