The performance that began at 3 p.m. ended at 8 p.m. It took 3 hours and 50 minutes just to play the music, and the total running time, including two intermissions (breaks), reached five hours. That is more than twice a typical classical concert. Nevertheless, the pull of Wagner's music held the more than 2,000 audience members who visited the Opera Theater of the Seoul Arts Center on the 5th firmly in their seats.

Premiered on June 10, 1865 at the Munich Court Opera, the opera ‘Tristan and Isolde’ is regarded as a masterpiece that flung open the door to modern music through chord progressions that shook the order of tonal harmony.

Abroad, it has been consistently staged with fervent support from Wagner fans, but in Korea there had been scarcely any chance to encounter it in a complete form. In 2012, the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra (SPO) performed it in a concert version with conductor Chung Myung-whun, but this is the first time for a full staging with proper sets and costumes. It is also the first time the SPO has gone into the opera theater's pit (the orchestra performance area). For this reason, fans had been waiting since the beginning of the year for the country's first full staging, presented over four days from December 4 to 7.

Stefan Merki, who directed ‘Tristan and Isolde’ at Theater Cottbus in Germany in 2023, turned the sea of the original into outer space. As the famous prelude begins in the dark, the Milky Way spreads across the upstage screen, and from the ceiling descends an oval structure reminiscent of the starship Enterprise from the film <Star Trek>. According to the director, he had “imagined the sea as space, the ship as a spacecraft, and the waves as the flow of starlight.”

Wagner operas are notorious for demanding immense stamina and formidable volume from singers. ‘Tristan and Isolde’ is even more difficult because the two leads carry an overwhelmingly large share. Even allowing for those challenges, the singing of tenor Brian Register as Tristan left something to be desired. His acting was adequate, but in the high register his sound often failed to project and was buried in the orchestral accompaniment, and even in the duets with soprano Eliska Vaisova as Isolde, the balance was off, overwhelmed by Vaisova's powerful high notes.

By contrast, Vaisova maintained hall-filling volume throughout and carried the dramatic tension to the very end. In ‘Love's Death’, which brings the entire drama to a close, the focus she displayed was the most brilliant moment of the evening.

The contributions of Korean singers in supporting roles also stood out. Mezzo-soprano Kim Hyo-na as the maid Brangane drew gasps with her transparent high notes. Bass Park Jong-min, who portrayed King Marke, displayed such presence with his dark, weighty singing that it changed the very air on stage.

In Wagner, the orchestra is not mere accompaniment but a powerful voice that drives the drama on its own. In ‘Tristan and Isolde’, because the orchestra must delicately reveal even the desires the characters cannot express, solid orchestral execution is essential. The Seoul Philharmonic, renowned for the finest ensemble in the country, left a special impression with its stable playing that day. Jaap van Zweden, the SPO's music director, is not an opera specialist, but from 2015 to 2018 he led the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra in recording the complete Wagner opera ‘The Ring of the Nibelung’, to great acclaim. Under his baton, the expressiveness of the strings, the song of the woodwinds, and the power of the brass came into balance, fully conveying the magical allure of Wagnerian orchestration.