Vincent Pontet / OnP

Opera

Tristan und Isolde

Richard Wagner

Opéra Bastille

from 17 January to 04 February 2023

5h15 with 2 intervals

Tristan und Isolde

Opéra Bastille - from 17 January to 04 February 2023

Synopsis

Tristan und Isolde is an immense operatic poem, a song of love and death inspired by the medieval legend of Tristan and Iseult and the passion that Richard Wagner nurtured for Mathilde, the wife of his rich Zurich patron, Otto Wesendonck. In musical terms, the opera marks a turning point in Wagner’s works and indeed in the history of Western music for its audacious harmonies and the way in which the composer overlays different rhythms, thus creating a languishing and endlessly prolonged tension. In this extraordinary production, Peter Sellars calms the heaving emotions of the two protagonists in a setting stripped of all earthly considerations. Detached from the stage, suspended like an altarpiece, Bill Viola’s videos portray the initiatory quest of the lovers to attain their nirvana. The association of these two major artists gives life to a unique and total work of art.

Duration : 5h15 with 2 intervals

Language : German

Surtitle : French / English

  • Opening

  • First Part 80 min

  • Interval 45 min

  • Second Part 80 min

  • Interval 30 min

  • Third Part 80 min

  • End

Show acts and characters

CHARACTERS

Isolde : Irish princess
Tristan : Knight of Cornwall, nephew of King Marke
Brangäne : Isolde's maid
Kurwenal : Squire of Tristan
Marke : King of Cornwall
Melot : a courtesan
A shepherd
A sailor
The helmsman

ACT I
Two damaged, angry, desperate, and hurt human beings are on a long trip in the same boat. Neither expects to survive the journey. For Isolde, suicidal despair takes the form of violent, destructive mood swings, bitter sarcasm, uncontrollable weeping and the need to talk everything out. For Tristan, it is the scarred, painful silence of emotional blockage and denial (during the entire trip Tristan has refused to acknowledge Isolde’s presence). Their closest friends, Brangaene, a healer and seer, and Kurwenal, an old soldier, are determined to help them through their darkest hours, and to prevent them from inflicting more harm on themselves or each other. Years before, Tristan had killed the Irish knight Morold in combat and had himself been wounded by Morold’s poison-tipped blade. This wound could only be healed by Morold’s fiancée, the princess and shamaness Isolde. Under the name “Tantris” he went to her to be cured. She removed the poison and cured the wound, saving his life. When he looked up into her eyes, she putdown her weapon. He went back to his own country. Now he has returned, but not, as Isolde had hoped, to deepen and consummate their relationship. Instead, he has come to collect her, as a kind of courier service, to present her as a trophy bride to his friend, King Mark of Cornwall. She is privately devastated and publicly humiliated. The women have brought with them on the journey a secret stash of potent ointments and elixirs, a gift from Isolde’s mother. Among them, the most sacred and beautiful is a philter of nectar of the purest, most distilled essence of love. Alternatively, there is a death drink, a quick solution to snuffing out a wasted life when the pain becomes just too unbearable. At the climax of the trip, Isolde toasts Tristan with the lethal cocktail. They look into each other’s eyes and drink avidly, each eager for a blessed exit and extinction. What they do not realize is that Brangaene has switched the vials, and they are drinking in pure love. For an infinite instant they think they have crossed the barrier from life into death ; their hearts are free. Their secret love begins to flow in an irresistible, transforming torrent as the ship comes into port and King Mark is announced with blazing trumpets. The bright lights of the world of power and prestige eclipse their dream, and they are left confused and amazed.

ACT II
As dusk deepens the sound of hunting horns echoes through the woods. Tristan’s “best friend” Melot has organised a night hunt for King Mark. In the dying light Brangaene foresees that the true quarry is Tristan himself. Isolde has eyes and ears only for the beauty of nature, the harmonies of the evening and the better self that lives in every human heart. Her heart is illumined by the moon, the goddess of love, the feminine power that surges through the universe. When she puts out the last torch, Tristan, who is waiting deep in the forest, will join her in the moonlight. Brangaene senses that spies are everywhere. She begs Isolde to keep the torch burning, and leaves for her watchtower. Isolde smothers the flame and waits for her lover’s approach in the dark. Their initial adrenalin rush of danger and exhilaration gives way to disbelief, then to slightly awkward banter, and, finally, to hard work. Isolde asks Tristan directly why he tried to betray her. What possessed him ? With her help, and in painful bursts of selfrecognition, gradually everything that Tristan sealed off comes pouring out. The allure of brilliant fame, the world’s honours, and the flash of success warped his personality, making him a stranger to himself. He hurt his closest friends without realizing it, and the growing disparity between his public image and his always low personal sense of self-worth produced a seething selfhatred. He felt unworthy of the woman whose praises he was singing, and tried to compensate by plunging into military adventurism. Isolde begins to understand that the man she saw as arrogant and cold was in fact frightened and desperate. But she also has to acknowledge how deeply she was hurt, and how much of that hurt she still carries. The basis for a serious relationship now can only be built as they deal with each other’s failures, disappointments and deceptions, separating the empowering and transforming imagination that sustains romance from the lies, evasions and falsehoods that poison trust. Together they step into the realm of night, the nocturnal self, the vast space in every human being that has nothing to do with anyone’s day job. All thinking, all appearance, all remembrance are extinguished in a night of perfect love “heart on heart, mouth on mouth, merged into one breath”. As their rapture reaches its peak, Brangaene’s warning voice peals across the night sky like clouds rolling in from the sea. The reality that all joy in this world will pass away, all beauty will die or be killed sublimates and elevates the love music – we hear the celestial voice of compassion expounding the Buddha’s four noble truths to mortals. Isolde begins to wonder what will happen in the morning. Mark and Melot are watching in the woods. Tristan has a strange premonition of his own death and declares that he is ready to die tonight. Isolde gently reminds him of the little word “and” in “Tristan and Isolde”. From now on he should try to include her in his dreams and nightmares – he is no longer alone. Tristan is Isolde and Isolde is Tristan. Even in death they will live in a love without fear, nameless, endless, with no more suffering and no separation. The day breaks. Melot takes the direct path to political power, denouncing forbidden love with great moral indignation and calling for maximum penalties to be imposed on vulnerable people. King Mark knows this path offers neither restitution nor justice. As he pours out his heart we realize that the king is just a man, that he was Tristan’s first lover, and that the “love that dare not speak its name” is as strong as any other love. He is infinitely tender with the man who betrayed him. He is in hell. He hopes one day to know why. Tristan ran from King Mark to find Isolde, and then he ran from Isolde by offering her to Mark. Covered in shame, Tristan sees that the only thing he has to offer Isolde, if she chooses to stay with him, is a life of failure and death. He has no home. He never had a home. He never knew his father or his mother, who died bringing him into the world. Isolde’s words of comfort are miraculous. Wherever they go together will be their home ; she loves Tristan more deeply in his failure than in his success. Thirty seconds later he is dead. After provoking Melot, he is killed without resistance.

ACT III
After love, the last task in a human life is death. We plunge into a dying man’s last agony, hallucinations, flashbacks, visions. The senses are intermittent, but the pain is continuous. One door is opening and another is closing. Tristan is in a coma for weeks. Kurwenal brings the body back to the ancestral home in Kareol. On a cliff overlooking the sea he waits and watches his best friend’s long, slow descent into death. A shepherd farther up the mountain plays on a pipe an endless ancient melody drifting in the chilly air as the day wanes. Kurwenal has asked the shepherd to change his tune if he sees a ship approaching. He has sent for Isolde who, if she is still alive, is the only healer who can bring Tristan back from the realm of death. Tristan stirs. The ancient melody is calling him back into this world. He tries to describe the land on the other side, a state of infinite, ultimate forgetfulness. Here, the sunlight is blinding, the searing pain in his body is unbearable. Within “the light is not yet out, the house is still not dark: Isolde lives and wakes ; she called me from the night”. Tristan is sure that he sees her ship in the distance, that she is coming to him again to heal his wounds. But there is no ship. His life keeps passing before his eyes as he slips below the threshold of consciousness. Childhood memories, thoughts of the parents he never knew mingle with the intense re-living of his previous near-death experiences. Pain floods his brain. The heat of his body is unendurable, the spirit is tearing at the flesh. At the maximum breaking point of mental and physical anguish, an instant of blazing, fiery clarity: the magic drink – was it poison or love potion ? – was brewed by no-one other than himself, from all of the hurt, sorrow, suffering and joy of his own life. A ship appears on the horizon as Tristan sustains his final heart attack. Kurwenal runs to receive Isolde. In a final paroxysm of indescribable waves of pain, Tristan tears off his bandages and bleeds freely and joyously. He hears Isolde’s voice coming to him as he dies. Could he not wait for her one more hour ? She pleads for him to continue breathing. She has so much to tell him. She came as his bride, how can she be punished with his funeral ? Her shock and overwhelming grief deepen into silence. A second ship is sighted. Mark and Brangaene are landing. Melot leads their advance party. Kurwenal kills Melot and then himself. The group have come, too late, on a mission of forgiveness and reconciliation. Now Isolde stirs. Looking deeply at Tristan, she sings “See him smiling, softly, softly, see the eyes that open fondly, oh my friends, don’t you see, don’t you feel and see ? Is it only I who hear these gentle, wondrous strains of music, joyously sounding, telling all things, reconciling, coming through him, piercing through me, rising upward in the ocean of sound, in the infinite all of the cosmic breath, to drown, descending, void of thought, into the highest, purest joy.”

Artists

Opera in three acts


Creative team

Cast

Orchestre et Choeurs de l’Opéra national de Paris
En collaboration avec la Los Angeles Philharmonic Association et le Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

Media

  • A new Isolde

    A new Isolde

    Watch the video

  • Melody from the depths of time: the English horn in Tristan und Isolde

    Melody from the depths of time: the English horn in Tristan und Isolde

    Watch the video

  • Peter Sellars and absolute music

    Peter Sellars and absolute music

    Read the article

  • Absolute Wagner

    Absolute Wagner

    Read the article

  • Draw-me Tristan und Isolde

    Draw-me Tristan und Isolde

    Watch the video

  • Draw-me Tristan und Isolde

    Draw-me Tristan und Isolde

    Watch the video

© Elisa Haberer / OnP

A new Isolde

Watch the video

Interview with Mary Elizabeth Williams

8:22 min

A new Isolde

By Marion Mirande

For her Paris Opera debut, American soprano Mary Elizabeth Williams embodies Isolde. After taking on the role for the first time a few months ago at the Seattle Opera, she now plays the Wagnerian heroine in the revival of Peter Sellars' production, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel.

© Elisa Haberer / OnP

Melody from the depths of time: the English horn in Tristan und Isolde

Watch the video

Interview with Peter Sellars and Christophe Grindel

01 min

Melody from the depths of time: the English horn in Tristan und Isolde

By Marion Mirande

In the immense and unbroken musical flow of Tristan und Isolde, Wagner introduced a solo part for the English horn that echoes like a mysterious voice. Christophe Grindel, soloist in the Paris Opera Orchestra, and Peter Sellars, whose legendary production is currently being revived at the Opéra Bastille, explain the nature of this musical page, comparable to a melody that comes from the depths of time and beings.

© Ruth Walz / OnP

Peter Sellars and absolute music

Read the article

An interview about Tristan et Isolde with its director

10 min

Peter Sellars and absolute music

By Marion Mirande

There are productions in the history of opera that mark an era. Peter Sellars' production of Tristan und Isolde with its videos by Bill Viola is such a one. First performed in 2005 at the Opéra Bastille, it is being revived under the benevolent gaze of Peter Sellars himself. One of the great visionaries of the stage, he talks about the work – perhaps the greatest in the history of western music – and this, now legendary production, which seems to give substance to that Wagnerian dream of a work of total art.

What path led you to Tristan und Isolde?

Tristan und Isolde is a work that speaks to everyone. It contains a universal yet tragic message: the world in which we live cannot fulfil us. It is a profoundly Buddhist notion taking us back to the Four Noble Truths. Through awareness of suffering, we go in search of deliverance. Wagner also wanted to show all the variations of love: loves that elevates, wounds, or kills; love beyond death, the love inherent to resurrection. When I was twenty, I already knew I wanted to work on “Tristan. I listened repeatedly to Wilhelm Furtwängler’s recording without succeeding in fully grasping the music. It’s an extremely complex work to stage. In each of the three acts, the real action takes place in the final minutes. The singers could very well do nothing since all the drama is interiorised.
  

When we talk to the singers you direct, we notice just how they are affected by the fact that you ask them for truth before theatrics.

What interests me most is the human being as a miracle. When I was young, my productions were criticised for lacking theatricality. For me, there was an abundance of that in politics and that was enough for me! So I went in search of a form of expression that forsakes pure theatrics in favour of the human being with all his or her fragility and radiance. Sometimes, it takes a great deal of patience and effort before we see a person reveal their true self. But that patience is worth the effort. And it’s a huge privilege to witness it as it emerges. The performers incredibly generous and courageous people that I invite to do extremely difficult things. My productions may appear minimalist, but they’re enriched by the contribution of all these artists. The fact of having bare non-illusionist spaces makes it possible to better grasp their presence which I wish are to be strong. If we can sense the majesty of the person, the aim has been achieved.

In “Tristan”, your use of space extends from the stage to the auditorium where the singers are positioned. It’s a very powerful experience for the audience since they find themselves surrounded by the music.

That’s exactly it. Wagner’s music is immersive. We are completely engulfed by the score which is like an ocean wave. It’s something which must be experienced from inside. Wagner wanted the experience to be total in such a way we cannot imagine anything existing outside. That’s where the idea of placing the singers, the chorus and the English horn in the auditorium came from, but it was also intended to avoid people viewing the stage as if it were screen. We had to introduce a dimension into the acoustic space. It’s true that Bill’s videos have a “flat” aspect... but they also have depth. They project us into nature and reflect the feelings we experience in contact with it. It’s touching to see the 19th century set designs in the Opera’s Library. The trees are painted with great finesse but they are devoid of life. Nothing moves. That Bill was able to bring the Californian forest into the theatre,and that we see the trees affected by the wind and the light, is extraordinary. He fully understood that the forest is not something we experience frontally, but rather, something we go through. We had to find a way to enter it.

The fact of having the singers nearby also helps to give a work of immeasurable musical and dramatic power a more intimate feel.

I wanted to avoid the singers appearing like a distant image. The needed to be close to the orchestra pit, close to the audience for the experience to be sensual. You need to be able to feel each word, each breath. The singers' anguish has to become our own. But Wagner also requires distance. The sublime music of Brangäne’s calls needs to be perceived as if it were coming from the moon. As the two lovers make love, cut off from the world, where do these calls come from? Are they even real? The manner in which they appear and then dissolve into space need to be shrouded in mystery. Just as the menacing presence of the horns must be perceptible everywhere. The sailors' sea shanty in the first act suggests the 19th century and the underlying discontent of a social class... We are almost among the Nibelungen!

The voices must be physically situated in places where we can sense the echoes of the events. They become spaces for memory, prophesies in an eventless dramaturgy.

How did you and Bill Viola both come to be involved in this project?

I’d known Bill in Los Angeles for a long time and hoped to involve him in the theatre. However, he was loath to commit to the stage which, in his eyes, could never be as clean and polished as a work in an exhibition space. Ultimately, it was at his invitation, and in a museum, that we ended up working together for the first time. It was his first retrospective and we created the scenography. Over that period, I was able to read his notebooks which contained years of his annotated thoughts and reflections. And so I proposed he worked on “Tristan”. We talked a lot about the work. One day, he shut his door and, two years later, he came up with five hours of video. It was a genuine shock.

His videos are often criticised for cannibalising Wagner’s opera, but we forget how much they are attuned to time as it is dictated by the action...

Yes. Unlike a set with painted canvases, Bill Viola’s videos are in motion. They introduce a temporality that follows Wagner’s music. As such, they run in slow motion. And this process reveals the seconds in the seconds, the minutes in the minutes, etc. It is like being on a long pilgrimage: only by experiencing the interiority of time are we able to have revelations and understand the essence of things. With Wagner, there is an extremely drawn-out temporality which interacts with a sudden action of fleeting duration. We had to seize on that moment and make it astonishing by creating an object that maintains tension for 90 minutes.

Just as the videos take visual account of the work’s dramatic temporality, the music allows us to contemplate differently a visual work we might see in an exhibition space...

None of the videos on show are comparable to that experience. Bill’s work is not meant to be displayed in a museum or some white cube gallery. The nocturnal ambience of many of his pieces confirms that they need to be surrounded by darkness. And “Tristan” is itself a poem of the night. We can compare it to that moment of pre-dawn prayer in Islamic and Buddhist traditions as well as with Christian monks where desire is in conflict with the body and soul.

At the beginning of the interview, you mentioned the opera’s Buddhist dimension - a religion of particular interest to Wagner. Could you tell us a little more about the work’s spiritual aspect?

Bill and I were particularly interested in Buddhist traditions. He took the various stages we go through when we leave this world very seriously: the transition from a burning state to another extremely cold one, the liquids that dissipate... This way we understand what is released in the struggle. This is what summarises the third act. After four hours, the music becomes extremely tense and complex. It’s particularly challenging for the instrumentalists and the tenor singing Tristan since it requires a strength that no one possesses having reached this stage. They have to to go and seek this lost energy at the source from which they draw new force to to complete the seemingly impossible. They are transcended. And thus we are confronted with the most beautiful thing ever written, a world at once sensual and spiritual, neither Christian nor Buddhist, but all that at the same time. This also sums up the work of Bill Viola.   

“Tristan” is a work which, from beginning to end, confronts us with death whilst leading us to contemplate and approach it differently to the way our culture teaches us.

Absolutely. The question is, how do you portray that experience on stage? The third act evokes the solitude inherent in death. That’s why I isolate Tristan in that experience. He is alone on the bed. He and Kurwenal never look at each other. They don’t see each other or touch each other. Each lives through a different experience. Even though they are physically close to each other, there is already a considerable distance between them. I also wanted to broach the question of how we regard a dead person. The moment we realise the body is nothing but a shell. The living being passes away but the gaze of others needs to convey the idea that he is more alive than ever and, for the first time, happy. In the Liebestod, Isolde talks of Tristan’s smile and invites us to look at it. And yet, until then Tristan has never smiled.

Is that why, at that moment and for the first time, the singers look at the screen on which Tristan rises?

That imagery is a reference to the painting by Titian that obsessed Wagner when he was composing “Tristan”1. Just as in the painting, where the Virgin ascends carried by a new force that contrasts with the despair of the figures in the lower portions of the canvas, Isolde asks the devastated group surrounding Tristan to contemplate another reality. The Liebestod can prove to be a trap and is often treated as a fixed moment. Musically, it escapes us; nothing has prepared us for that music. And nothing on stage manages to equal that passage. But Bill's illustration of this idea of transfiguration is so profound, so complex… The meeting of opposites gives rise to something extraordinary. We can say that a visual artist has managed to create images as transcendental as Wagner’s music.


1. The Assumption of the Virgin, 1518. On numerous occasions, Wagner went to admire the painting in Venice, where he composed the second act of “Tristan” and part of the third.   

Absolute Wagner

Read the article

Passion in Tristan and Isolde

06 min

Absolute Wagner

By Valère Etienne / BmO

A corner stone of the Western operatic repertoire, Tristan and Isolde stands alone in Wagner’s oeuvre as the superlative expression of human feelings, as an attempt to utter the ineffable: “Only love brings self-knowledge [...] It’s essence is inexpressible, one can only show its movements and variations”, affirmed Wagner. Performing “Tristan” is thus a challenge obliging the performer not only to show passion but to live it.

One can easily have the impression, with Tristan and Isolde, of being confronted with a Wagnerian absolute. Whether this stems from the “metaphysical” aspect of his subject, or from the relative absence of nationalistic or Pan-Germanic references which, in many other of Wagner's operas might put off those music lovers most resistant to his universe, Tristan has a certain broadness of appeal. For, whatever the sources drawn on by Wagner (Gottfried of Strasbourg’s poem, Hymns to the Night by Novalis or Schlegel’s Lucinde ...), ultimately the subject explores the simplest and most universal themes in all their purity: love, suffering and death. And it depicts passion in so absolute a form that, as Romain Rolland said, Tristan towers above all other love poems like a mountain.

As has been stated, love in Tristan and Isolde, appears in its most metaphysical form. This can be seen for example in the way Wagner treats the theme of the love philtre, which here does not play at all the same role as in the original myth: the philtre, this time, functions as a poetical metaphor; it does not engender the love between Tristan and Isolde: that love was already there before the two lovers drank it. Had their love been provoked by the philtre, their passion would have been but a relative passion, a phenomenon belonging to the material and temporal world of cause and effect. It exists, instead, in its own right, timelessly: rather than an objective reality, it is the way in which the two lovers see the world, it is their desire and their will projected on the world (the extent to which Tristan was influenced by Schopenhauer is well known). One need hardly add that the love between Tristan and Isolde does not require staging: rather, it inhabits the characters from within and is lodged at the heart of the singing and the music. Technically, this translates, for example, into the abandoning of recitative in favour of continuous melody: it is less important to further the action than to give life to an emotion.

Ludwig et Malwine Schnorr von Carolsfeld dans les rôles-titres de Tristan et Isolde lors de la création de l’œuvre à Munich, 1865
Ludwig et Malwine Schnorr von Carolsfeld dans les rôles-titres de Tristan et Isolde lors de la création de l’œuvre à Munich, 1865 © Joseph Albert

Wagner’s major preoccupation in Tristan, more than in any of his earlier operas, was to live passion and elicit it in others, rather than seeking to express or show it. In 1859, had he not written to Mathilde Wesendonck, who inspired the work, that he wanted all the subtle shades of human feeling to be heard in his music with their incessant swings from one extreme to the other, independent of any action depicted and that no discourse is able to express? He thought he had found the ideal performer for Tristan when the tenor Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, who first interpreted the role in the premier performances in Munich in 1865, understood and immediately embodied his thinking, almost without his having to communicate it in words. “When I told him in a low voice that it was impossible for me to express any judgement of my ideal, that he was now about to realise, his dark eyes sparkled like a star of love ... A sob, barely perceptible, and never again did we utter a word concerning the third act”. Carolsfeld was so powerfully possessed by the role of Tristan and lived its passions so fully that Wagner, fearing for his health, ordered performances to be interrupted after the fourth night. “I do not think I have the right to inflict such a state of distress on a man”, he said. And, in fact, the singer, aged twenty-nine, died six weeks later ... Wagner, devastated, mourned not only a friend but also the ideal interpreter of his music, a performer that Carolsfeld had allowed him to glimpse and of which he held the ineffable secret.

Tristan appears once again in 1903 in the eponymous novella by Thomas Mann, exemplifying passion represented in art with such purity that one can only play it by experiencing it from within, and not express it or describe it. Thus, when the ingenuous Gabrielle plays some of Wagner’s most memorable passages on the piano, (the prelude, the second act and the death of Isolde), all their expressive force naturally pours forth. By her side, Herr Spinell, a connoisseur, launches into a long exalted speech that takes up some of the most passionate expressions used by Wagner in his libretto; but his words alone, not being music, appear to Gabrielle as mere obscure rhetoric, leaving her mystified. “I don’t understand everything, Herr Spinell, there are many things I only guess at [...] But how is it that you who understand this so well, cannot play it?” she asks. “The two rarely go together,” Spinell concedes, caught off guard. What one cannot express in words must be lived, played: that is where art begins.   

Draw-me Tristan und Isolde

Watch the video

Understand the plot in 1 minute

01 min

Draw-me Tristan und Isolde

By Matthieu Pajot

Tristan und Isolde is an immense operatic poem, a song of love and death inspired by the medieval legend of Tristan and Iseult and the passion that Richard Wagner nurtured for Mathilde, the wife of his rich Zurich patron, Otto Wesendonck.  

Draw-me Tristan und Isolde

Watch the video

Understand the plot in 1 minute

1:17 min

Draw-me Tristan und Isolde

By The Motion Fighters

Motivated by the love that bound him to Mathilda Wesendonck, Richard Wagner’s composition of Tristan und Isolde goes far beyond any simple operatic gesture. His libretto transcends the medieval legend in a metaphysical view of love with its tensions and pessimism. Peter Sellars’ production pours oil onto this troubled sea of emotions in an almost dematerialised setting bared of all earthly contingencies whilst Bill Viola presents the lovers’ initiatory quest for nirvana in videos detached from the stage, suspended like altarpieces. The association of these two major artists gives birth to a unique, holistic work of art.  

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  • Tristan et Isolde (saison 22/23) - Acte 2

  • Tristan et Isolde (saison 22/23) - Acte 2

  • Tristan et Isolde (saison 22/23) - Acte 2

  • Tristan et Isolde (saison 22/23) - Acte 3

  • Tristan et Isolde (saison 22/23) - Acte 3

  • Tristan et Isolde (saison 22/23) - Acte 3

Access and services

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

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Car park

Q-Park Opéra Bastille 34, rue de Lyon 75012 Paris

Book your parking spot
  • Cloakrooms

    Free cloakrooms are at your disposal. The comprehensive list of prohibited items is available here.

  • Bars

    Reservation of drinks and light refreshments for the intervals is possible online up to 24 hours prior to your visit, or at the bars before each performance.

  • Boutiques

    A selection of works items are available on our various boutiques: Online store and The Opéra Bastille Shop.

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  • Last-minute tickets

    Special reduced rates for people under the age of 28, unemployed and seniors over 65 are available. 

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  • Parking

    You can park your car at the Q-Park Opéra Bastille. It is located at 34 rue de Lyon, 75012 Paris. 

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In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Q-Park Opéra Bastille 34, rue de Lyon 75012 Paris

Book your parking spot
  • Cloakrooms

    Free cloakrooms are at your disposal. The comprehensive list of prohibited items is available here.

  • Bars

    Reservation of drinks and light refreshments for the intervals is possible online up to 24 hours prior to your visit, or at the bars before each performance.

  • Boutiques

    A selection of works items are available on our various boutiques: Online store and The Opéra Bastille Shop.

    LEARN MORE.

  • Last-minute tickets

    Special reduced rates for people under the age of 28, unemployed and seniors over 65 are available. 

    LEARN MORE.

  • Parking

    You can park your car at the Q-Park Opéra Bastille. It is located at 34 rue de Lyon, 75012 Paris. 

    BOOK YOUR PARKING PLACE.

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

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