Wagner Perfumed

There is no doubt that Wagner's Tristan und Isolde is an opera about sex. But how sexy it is depends on whether the audience relies more on its eyes or its ears. While the score throbs with passion, most of the dramatic action takes place in the souls of the title characters, with very little left for the stage.

The result is that in most productions, Tristan and Isolde are lovers who seem to forget that they have bodies. Sometimes the audience wishes it could forget too, in view of the age and bulk of most singers who are up to the demands of the vocal score. Not even the composer's innovation-minded grandson, Wieland Wagner, could change this. His productions introduced heavy hints of Freudian psychology, but the lovers' bond remained shrouded in symbolism. It all seemed to bear out Wagner's advice to Nietzsche that to get the most out of the opera, he should take off his glasses and listen to the orchestra.

Love, Love, Love! Yet at Italy's Spoleto Festival last week, Gian Carlo Menotti's new production of Tristan had the audience putting on its glasses in a hurry. To create "sensuality on the stage corresponding to that of the music," Festival Director Menotti charted swirls of fluid movement and replaced the traditional austerity of Wagnerian scenery with velvet, flowers and drawing-room furniture. Menotti was also convinced that "when an Isolde looks like a virago and Tristan looks like a Swedish masseur, the love scenes risk becoming grotesque, even comical." So he filled the leading roles with two American singers who were stunningly typecast. Isolde, Soprano Klara Barlow, 38, exhibited the leggy (5 ft. 11 in.), platinum-blonde beauty of a former chorus girl --which she is. As Tristan, Tenor Claude Heater, 38, had the squarejawed, rangy physique (6 ft. 2 in., 190 Ibs.) of a former Marine--which he is.

Menotti coached them in a realistic acting style ("Love, love, love! Pure ecstasy!") and framed an Act II love scene that was definitely neither grotesque nor comical. A filmy-gowned Isolde and a bare-chested Tristan met in a forest glade that Menotti had sprayed with mood-inducing perfume; they kissed rapturously, and then, singing at the top of their voices, sank into a long, full-length embrace in the grass.

Musically, Barlow and Heater displayed strength and sweetness without quite achieving the fervor and finesse of the best Wagnerians. They were supported only adequately by the Belgrade Philharmonic. But if the performance fell short of a complete artistic triumph, it clearly earned a special place among modern Wagner productions. It will be remembered as the one that put the tryst back in Tristan.

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