Product Details

• Actors: Richard Wagner, Ben Heppner, Jane Eaglen, Rene Pape, Hans-Joachim Ketelsen
• Format: AC-3, Classical, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, DVD, Subtitled, NTSC
• Language: English
• Subtitles: Chinese, English, French, German, Spanish
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Deutsche Grammophon
• DVD Release Date: March 9, 2004
• Run Time: 238 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0000CGV0P
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #39,248 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

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  Movies & TV > Musicals & Performing Arts > Classical > By Composer > Wagner, Richard

• For more information about "Wagner - Tristan und Isolde / Heppner, Eaglen, Pape, Dalayman, Ketelsen, Metropolitan Opera" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 65 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mixed Feelings, January 30, 2005

By	David Cady (Jersey City, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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I had the great pleasure of seeing this production at the Met on a night when Eaglen was, not surprisingly, out. Subbing for her (and making her Met debut!) was a svelte, dramatic woman named Sue Patchell, who sang beautifully and acted the role superbly. Heppner, always wonderful, rose to the occassion and matched her performance note for note, moment for moment. Patchell's ovation at the end was well-deserved and even Levine paid homage to her at the curtain call. I was hoping to recreate some of the excitement of that night with this DVD; I have mixed feelings about it. First of all, I think the production itself is fantastic. What's accomplished with the use of color, light (or lack thereof) and a few geometric shapes is truly remarkable. I know I'm going to get "unhelpful" votes, but I find the opera itself exceedingly dull in places, lacking the energy and drama of Wagner at his best (i.e. the Ring Cycle or "Meistersinger"). Thank goodness for something interesting to watch as the lovers go on and on (and on...) about love. A traditional set would have simply added to the tedium, which seemed more pronounced watching at home. And I think Eaglan's a big problem. It's not her size per se, but what she does (or doesn't do) with it. Deborah Voight, Stephanie Blythe and Jessye Norman are all large women, but they carry their weight with grace and a magnificent presence. Eaglan just seems...there, awkward, lumpish; she's just not enough of an actress to carry off the emotional turmoil of the character. Neither she nor Heppner sounds their best, and there's absolutely no chemistry between them. Heppner has nothing to work off of, so seems (atypically) to phone a lot of the performance in. (He's superb at the top of Act III...when Eaglan's offstage.) In supporting roles, Katarina Dalayman and Rene Pape are both superb. For me the production gets a 5, but this performance and the opera itself get 3s.

25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Requires effort - but enrapturing , July 26, 2004

By	Andrew Freborg (Stow, Ohio United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Tristan and Isolde is not light fare by any means ... Like any great masterwork the experience requires something of the mind - coalescing/processing the sound, words and visuals. Snobs asside, one of the beauties of all perfomance art is the individual imperfection and uniqueness, though I find very little "imperfect" here. I especially found myself drawn to Eaglen's Isolde - very human, real - the sparse sets and underplayed gestures, at least for me, promoted a more intense expression of the inner feeling - esp. her ending experience of love in the eternal. My favorite opera!

One small "distraction" -- I found the toy medieval soldiers and castles in Tristan's death scene somewhat silly - They seemed more of an afterthought and clashed with the overall elegant design of the staging. I think something more simple with lighting or scrims may have been better.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Something weird is going on here . . . , December 5, 2004

By	Joseph Curwen - See all my reviews

If you have bothered to peruse the reviews on this particular DVD you may have noticed some negative postings, all giving it one star & vague reasons as to why it was given one star. They all have the same comments & if you bother to look at that particular person's other reviews, you will notice that their aren't any. At the risk of sounding consiracy-happy it seems that certain person(s) want to discredit this performance for some dark, eldritch reason known only to themselves.

I personally rather liked it, the staging maybe be modern, but not in the sense that all sorts of odds & ends are thrown in to bewilder the average person and give the director a faux sense that that they have created something 'deep' or 'relevant' to whatever view they are trying to thrust on the public. I'm not a big fan of Eaglen, but this is about the only thing I have her in that I have found enjoyable. Heppner does seem to be suffering some vocal problems since he tried tackling this role, so evidently the Tristan curse is still going strong. The other roles are well taken, with perhaps no real standouts, maybe Pape's Marke.