Interview Stage director Pierre Audi and soprano Malin Byström on Tristan und Isolde Had they been asked years ago, both director Pierre Audi and soprano Malin Byström would have told you they would never dare take on Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Pierre Audi saw his first performance of Tristan und Isolde aged eleven and it made a deep impression on him. “Darkness. Green and blue. Overpowering music.” Audi remembers the second act in particular: “A duet that never ended. A surreal charge. Music that continued for ever. We all know that children like to see action on the stage, but what remained in my mind was that — the static sense.” The opera about the overwhelming love between Tristan and Isolde concludes with the ‘Liebestod’, a finale in which the heroine sings herself into a kind of ecstasy next to the body of her dead lover. That sounds right up Pierre Audi’s street: over the years, he has proved himself to be a master in stylised and precisely choreographed productions that convey the spiritual aspects of human existence. And yet Audi says he was apprehensive about taking on Tristan und Isolde: “In a panic even, Photo: Sarah Wong Pierre Audi as the ‘Liebestod’ key 42 Opera
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