Konwitschny's Tristan, Meier's Isolde: Still Young at Fifteen

Seeing the Bavarian State Opera’s 1998 production of Tristan & Isolde is like visiting an old friend. A dear friend, certainly, because it never gets old. It speaks to the greatness of Peter Konwitschny’s work that it is an experience that “upon familiarity will grow more content”—not “contempt”, to quote Shakespeare’s intentional malapropism properly.

Konwitschny’s was the first Tristan &