The french Tristan

Storm the ticket offices of the Hebbel-Theater: The Zeitgenoessische Oper Berlin is performing "Le Vin Herbé"

 A Tristan after the Tristan? Frank Martin wrote it in the years 1938 to 1941 in Geneva, and naturally this French Tristan is not easily received in Wagner country … In Germany it was produced every twelve years or so in concert form, but never on stage … This unparalleled epic and dramatic work can properly unfold only on stage and demonstrate the mastery of Frank Martin’s only opera ...

Six men and six women report to each other and to the spectators, without any discernible hierarchy. Eight of them also represent the figures of the story … the narration gains a duplicity which is exposed in a most wonderful way by this production ...

The stage setting designed by Mirella Weingarten with its walls and long benches is impregnated with this story, even by the color of the music ...

With her surprisingly imaginative, but at the same time austere and sensitive choreography Sabrina Hölzer, the stage director, succeeds in keeping the twelve singers permanently on stage during all their epic passages, without ever running idle …

The cast of singers is of uniformly high quality, with pronounced individual characters as well as a compactness in the overall picture. Although there are fewer musicians in the orchestral pit than there are singers on the stage, the conductor Rüdiger Bohn kindles the music in a wild magic with the suction of its ostinati. Martin’s lustrous harmonies … are produced so perfectly that they seem to fill the stage with an almost pictorial presence.