Now In Korea
Sleep Is OK: A Six-Hour Musical Pilgrimage — Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde Debuts in Korea
Creatrip Team
3 months ago
Korea’s National Opera Company will present the country’s first full staging of Wagner’s epic Tristan und Isolde from Dec 4–7 at Seoul Arts Center (예술의전당). The production is part two of the company’s Wagner series and a capstone project by director Choi Sang-ho, who says he poured the company’s full budget and resources into the premiere to raise Korea’s opera production standards. The six-hour work—based on Celtic myth and famed for its continuous melodic lines and harmonic innovation—is described by Choi as a “musical pilgrimage” rather than a trial: audiences can even drift off and still rejoin the emotional flow. Music director Yap van Zweden and the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra (서울시향) will accompany the production, marking the orchestra’s first operatic collaboration in 13 years; Choi recruited the conductor before a director to ensure musical leadership. Swiss director Stephan Märki frames the story as a journey from sea to space, and an international cast includes heldentenor Stuart Skelton and soprano Catherine Foster (with alternative casts like Brian Jagde and Czech dramatic soprano Eliška Weissenberg). The staging aims to showcase Korea’s growing capacity for large-scale opera, part of Choi’s institutional reforms—new resident soloist seasons, international-standard repertoire, and many domestic premieres—meant to position the National Opera as an Asian opera-house production hub and prepare for future Ring Cycle ambitions (니벨룽의 반지).
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