Nina Stemme says farewell to Isolde after 126 performances

By RONALD BLUM
Associated Press

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Nina Stemme tilted back her head after the final notes of her 126th and last Isolde performance, and her eyes filled with tears.

She was hugged by tenor Stuart Skelton and mezzo-soprano Karen Cargill as the audience in Marian Anderson Hall stood and applauded Sunday evening.

A few days earlier, Stemme thought back to April 2000, when Glyndebourne Festival general director Nicholas Snowman and opera director Nikolaus Lehnhoff walked into her dressing room in Antwerp, Belgium, asking her to sing in the English company’s first-ever performance of Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.”

“I really did think they were joking,” she recalled. “My colleague, Christopher Ventris, said, ‘No. No. They’re not joking. You have to be careful.'”

Stemme went home to Sweden, considered the offer with vocal coach Richard Trimborn and made her Isolde debut on May 19, 2003, at the Glyndebourne Festival with Robert Gambill as Tristan and Jiří Bělohlávek conducting. She chose to sing her final two Isoldes 22 years later with the Philadelphia Orchestra and music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who conducted the opera for the first time on June 1 and coaxed a luminous rendition from a premier orchestra at its peak.

“I’m 62 now. I gave it to my 60s to sing these big roles and now I’ve dropped Elektra and Brünnhilde, and Isolde is the last daughter on stage that I’m singing,” Stemme said. “I decided this years ago. This is how it works and every year that I was able to sing Isolde feels like a bonus and a privilege.”

Connection to Birgit Nilsson

Stemme was friends with Birgit Nilsson, one of the greatest Isoldes and Brünnhildes, who died in 2005 at age 87.

“I was on the verge to go down to her in south Sweden to study Isolde but of course me as a young singer with little kids at home, I never felt ready,” Stemme said. “At that time when we got to know each other, I was singing mostly a lyric repertoire.”

Skelton sang with Stemme in Wagner’s “Der Fliegende Holländer” at the Vienna State Opera in 2004 and his Tristan was paired with Stemme’s Isolde in New York, Munich and Naples, Italy.

“It’s as radiant now as it was when I first heard her sing it in Glyndebourne way back in the day,” he said. “No one knew really who Nina Stemme was to a certain extent. Certainly I don’t think anyone was ready for what she brought to Isolde even then.”

A conductor learning from the singer

Nézet-Séguin first worked with Stemme in a performance of Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in 2007, didn’t collaborate again until performances of Strauss’ “Die Frau ohne Schatten” at the Met last fall.

“The breadth of her experience with the role is just guiding all of us, me, but also the orchestra, who is playing it for the first time in understanding the flow of the piece, understanding their shades and the colors, and that is invaluable,” Nézet-Séguin said of Stemme’s Isolde. “It was wonderful for me to benefit from it.”

Singers were on a platform above and behind the orchestra, with LED lights below setting a mood: red in the first act, dark blue in the second and light blue in the third.

Stemme wore a dark gown in the first and third acts and a shimmering silver dress in the second, while Skelton, baritone Brian Mulligan (Kurwenal), bass Tareq Nazmi (King Marke) and tenor Freddie Ballentine (Melot) were largely in black, and Cargill (Brangäne) in a lighter-colored costume. Showing sets and complicated directions weren’t necessary, she conveyed Isolde’s emptions with her eyes, smiles and nods. During the great second-act love duet, Stemme and Skelton clinked water canisters.

“Twenty-two years ago I could act the young princess that was in love or hated her love for Tristan,” she said. ”I have other colors to my voice now and I’m older so of course this interpretation will change. I feel more at home in the middle range and with age, of course, the top notes are not as gleaming as they used to be, but I can make up for that in other ways hopefully — on a good day.”

Stemme’s future schedule includes less-taxing roles, such as Klytämnestra in Strauss’ “Elektra” and Waltraute in Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung.” She leaves behind an outstanding recording of her Isolde, made from November 2004 through January 2005 at London’s Abbey Road Studios with tenor Plácido Domingo and conductor Antonio Pappano.

Lise Davidsen makes her Isolde debut next year

Anticipation is building for the next great Isolde. Lise Davidsen is scheduled to make her role debut on Jan. 12 at Barcelona’s Gran Teatre del Liceu and then open a new production at New York’s Metropolitan Opera on March 9 with Nézet-Séguin.

“She said how happy she is to in a way symbolically pass this role, pass it on to her, in a way through me,” Nézet-Séguin said of Stemme. “That is almost like a torch that has been carried.”

After all those Isoldes, Stemme feels more a Puccini heroine than a Wagnerian star.

“At heart,” she said, “I’m still Madama Butterfly or Mimì.”