Met’s Tristan takes a hard fall

NEW YORK -- Stage lore holds that Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” is cursed and that it’s best called “the Scottish play” inside the theater to avert bad luck. Even the Metropolitan Opera has historically had troubles mounting Verdi’s operatic version. But after a mishap-free run of the Verdi last fall and a seemingly jinxed production of “Tristan and Isolde” this month, it appears that Met insiders would do better by referring to Wagner’s masterpiece as “the Cornish opera.”

Tuesday night did not break the jinx. Just after 11 p.m., as the last act began to unfold, the set malfunctioned, sending the tenor singing Tristan, Gary Lehman, careening headfirst into the prompter’s box -- which had an open flame on top -- and bringing the show to a standstill. Although he was reportedly uninjured and the performance resumed after eight minutes, the incident marked the Met’s third straight “Tristan” to be plagued by misfortune.

Only days before the March 10 opening night of the opera, set mostly in Cornwall, the originally scheduled Tristan, Ben Heppner, canceled because of a virus. His cover, John Mac Master, struggled in a rehearsal (which went overtime, forcing Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes” to begin late) and was roundly booed at the actual performance. The Met’s management then scrambled to find someone else to assume the daunting part.

The next performance, last Friday, saw Lehman take the role onstage for the first time, only to lose his Isolde in Act 2 when soprano Deborah Voigt, suffering from a stomach ailment, suddenly raced offstage. She did not return, and her replacement, Janice Baird, made her Met debut with less than an hour’s notice.

Tuesday night, the audience gasped as Lehman remained motionless for almost a minute after his crash. Stagehands rushed out to help him, and conductor James Levine abruptly halted the music.

Apparently, the fire did not burn Lehman, nor was he seriously hurt by the impact. Eventually, he walked offstage without assistance, earning applause from the crowd. The curtain quickly came down.

A spokesman for the Met appeared shortly afterward and announced that Lehman was not injured and would continue “after a glass of water.” A woman in an orchestra seat yelled, “Get him some ice!”

After an eight-minute pause, the curtain opened and Levine and the orchestra began playing, having backed up a few bars in the score. Lehman looked a little rattled -- which gave Tristan’s next lines, “Where have I been? Where am I?,” an eerie believability -- but he and the rest of the cast finished with no further surprises save for the bows.

Traditionally, Isolde takes the final bow, but at the first curtain call, Voigt (whose American debut in the role has been upstaged by these problems) allowed Lehman to receive the last ovation. The audience showered him with cheers.

Now the Met must prepare for a fourth go at Wagner’s notoriously hard-to-perform opera on Saturday -- which will be seen not just by 4,000 New Yorkers. The performance will be broadcast live all over the world, with an estimated 60,000 people watching in movie theaters and 7 million listening on radio. Theaters and radio stations in Southern California will air the opera at 9:30 a.m.

Wednesday afternoon, meanwhile, the Met announced that American tenor Robert Dean Smith would appear in the broadcast. But should anything prevent that, the Met confirmed, it will have two (now) veteran Tristans -- Lehman and Mac Master -- in the wings.