Yuval Sharon focuses on the theme of rebirth in Tristan and Isolde

Considered one of the fundamental scores in the history of music, Tristan and Isoldeby Richard Wagner, showed its bold new production to the world from the Metropolitan Opera House (Met Opera), as the sixth title of the 2025-2026 season of the Live from the Met program in New York.

The broadcast, lasting just over five hours, arrived this weekend via satellite to the National Auditorium, which was three-quarters full on its first floor, becoming a memorable Wagnerian event.

The production featured the concert direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the staging of Yuval Sharon – who moves away from the traditional approach focused on death to focus on rebirth – and the voices of the Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen and the American tenor Michael Spyres.

The performance on the Lincoln Center stage coincided with the opening to the public of Frida and Diego: The last dream, exhibition that will accompany the premiere at the Met Opera of Frida and Diego’s last dreamnext May 14 and whose performance on the 29th of the same month will be broadcast live to more than 2 thousand theaters in 70 countries, including Mexico through the National Auditorium.

During the transmission of the Wagnerian title, the singer Lisette Oropesa, who served as its host, showed images of the New York mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard and the Spanish baritone Carlos Álvarez characterized as Frida and Diego.

For the Met, Tristan and IsoldeWagner’s (1813-1883) mystical meditation on love and death, occupies a unique place in the repertoire. Based on an ancient myth, the German composer created a drama in which everyday reality is discarded as illusion, while truths about life, love and death are revealed in a feverish dream.

The vocal challenges, the sumptuous symphonic scale and the mystical nature of the story make this work a unique and unmissable phenomenon.

It is an opera in three acts composed between 1857 and 1859, and premiered in 1865 in Munich, which marked a turning point in the history of music due to its harmonic treatment and continuous structure.

Yuval Sharon’s proposal is bold and risky, which has earned him some controversies after its premiere at the Met. The set elements are scarce: a table and some chairs in the first two acts and a forensic iron in the third and last.

The main bet lies in a movable circular structure that occupies the center of the stage, resembling a kind of vortex, tunnel, shutter or eye that gives way to the different actions, from the sea in the first act to the abstract representation of the afterlife in the third.

The outline of that structure serves as a giant screen where the actions that occur on stage are projected at times, as well as symbolic elements, including an hourglass, lit candles, the sea and the firmament.

Metaphysical possibilities of love

Tristan and Isolde It is an epic, a musical monument, “a marathon.” An exploration of the metaphysical possibilities of love and death, with a transfiguring ending and five hours of pure Wagner music.

It is also one of the most difficult operas to sing, which is why it is an exciting experience for the cast. For several years now, the opera world had been clamoring for Lise Davidsen to take on the crowning role of Isolde. Tenor Michael Spyres played Tristan for the first time in his career.

In an interview broadcast during the two intermissions, Lise Davidsen admitted the personal challenges: “it has been much more difficult than I expected. My world revolves around my two children and that is the only thing that matters to me, and suddenly I also have to worry about singing.”

About Isolda, he said: “It is the story of everything that life contains. The second act has this connection between two people that can never be broken. I love that it is so wild and so vulnerable.”

Spyres, for his part, reflected: “everyone told me it was the Everest of opera and they were right.” Regarding the collaboration with Sharon, he added: “Going over each word was one of the most interesting processes, since this text is dense, philosophically, musically and emotionally. It’s like trying to memorize an entire book by Nietzsche with Shakespearean prose. That’s Wagner.”