Philadelphia Orchestra’s ‘Tristan und Isolde’ is a five-hour-long triumph

Wagner’s five-hour Tristan und Isolde — returning to the Philadelphia Orchestra for the first time since 1934 — is something that great musicians long to live up to and hold for conditions to be as right as they can be.

Leonard Bernstein, Carlos Kleiber, and Jessye Norman all held out for extraordinary circumstances that didn’t always turn out well. But after years of discussion and planning, Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Orchestra created a landmark experience on Sunday at Marian Anderson Hall.

With the orchestra dominating the stage, what is normally the “Conductor’s Circle” was extended outward to accommodate the star cast and chorus. Unpromising vocal casting either triumphed, or was better than expected.

Audience attrition was apparent around hour four. But in a community long starved of complete live Wagner operas, the audience mostly devoured this in-concert presentation. It could’ve been seen as a dry run for Nézet-Séguin’s full-production outing at the Metropolitan Opera next season. More likely, the Philadelphia Orchestra conjured an experience that the New York ensemble will find hard to match.

Though Tristan excerpts are often heard in concert, the whole piece will never be a mainstream experience. Exterior action is simple: Tristan and Isolde fall in love after mistakenly ingesting a love potion, betray the king to whom Isolde is promised, suffer a tragic separation, and die upon being reunited. Sort of.

They’re actually transfigured into another realm, suggesting that love is only safe in after-death dimensions. Isolde’s great final aria — the “Liebestod” — was described by the composer as “coming to clarity.”

Dramatic events go on long after their point is made; they’re part of a larger, immersive musical construction that becomes so much its own world, that listeners are less likely to question it. Cutting the score risks interrupting the immersion, though Sunday’s only cut was a few minutes leading up to the Act II “Love Duet.”

Yet for all of its pondering, Tristan has more sweep than anything else by Wagner, thanks to the progression of keys that make the opera a five-hour journey toward harmonic resolution. Calling the piece a “music drama” relieves it of any obligations to be entertaining. Time is (hopefully) transcended amid extensive lamentations, both by the cuckolded King Marke in Act II and by Tristan, who spends Act III in delirium while dying from wounds.

Even the shepherd’s solo piping unfurls over 40-plus leisurely bar lines.

The most familiar music often acts differently in a complete-performance context. Nézet-Séguin led the opening with a slow momentous tempo that gave him much room to later build peaks and valleys of tension. And there’s plenty to build with in the rich orchestral ecosystem and demanding vocal lines stylized to make pronouncements with near-Shakespearean rhetoric. The particular sound favored by Nézet-Séguin on Sunday had a silky resemblance to the Wagner Bayreuth Festival orchestra but with added Philadelphia muscle.

None of the roles are easily cast. Though soprano Nina Stemme has owned Isolde for the past 20 years, she is now 62, and announced she is giving up the role — on the heels of a Carnegie Hall recital, only weeks ago, that showed her in compromised voice. And yet Sunday’s Isolde was perhaps as authoritative as any she has ever sung. Many singers fear blowing out their voices in Isolde’s Act I curse, but Stemme only got better.

Clearly, it’s not a young-sounding voice, but she can still generate a wall of sound, often followed by a specially honed vocal color at the end of the phrase. Stuart Skelton wasn’t the most commanding Tristan but the voice is cleanly produced and his command of the German language is deep. His Act III dementia scenes can show Wagner at his most tedious. With more dramatic details than I’ve ever heard from the orchestra, it was riveting.

The hapless Brangäne (Isolde’s maid) had Karen Cargill fully committed but forcing her voice in worrisome ways. Emotionally vulnerable royalty is a tough balance, though Tareq Nazmi projected King Marke’s profound humanity with a tone quality one could listen to for hours. Much the same can be said for Brian Mulligan as Kurwenal.

Some footnotes: Subtitles were not just well written but clearly projected — not easy in a hall of this size. In Elizabeth Starr Masoudnia’s sublime reading of the Act III English horn solo, every iteration seemed more distant, while Tristan’s life ebbed away. The exclamatory choral contributions in Act I had great accuracy and momentum from the Philadelphia Symphonic Chorus, having been prepared by retired Metropolitan Opera chorus master Donald Palumbo. Any chance he’ll come back? And stay?

In fact, Tristan und Isolde ought to make a return visit soon. More orchestral colors can be discovered, along with more darkness around the edges.

“Tristan und Isolde” will be repeated Sunday, June 8, 2 p.m. at the Kimmel Center. philorch.ensembleartsphilly.org