NEW YORK (AP) — About 4 1/2 hours after the first notes of Wagner's “Tristan und Isolde,” a startling sound emerges from the wings, one many in the audience likely have never heard before.
A nearly 4-foot wooden horn known as a holztrompete, specially constructed to the composer's somewhat ambiguous specifications, signals the arrival of the ship carrying Isolde and King Marke to Brittany, inspiring a mortally wounded Tristan to hang on to life for
a few more moments.
“Joyous,” said Billy R. Hunter Jr., the Metropolitan Opera's principal trumpet, who plays the wooden horn from stage left.
Yuval Sharon's compelling new production starring Lise Davidsen that opened Monday to mostly rave reviews features a specially constructed horn nearly Hunter's height — it measures a minimum 46.5 inches and lengthens slightly if the tuning slide is turned.
“You listen to the sound of the holztrompete and the imitation, it’s a clear difference,” said bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green, who sings Marke alongside Davidsen’s Isolde and Michael Spyres’ Tristan. “It blows my mind to think that Wagner created it himself. How many humans have created an instrument? It really sounds like victory.”
While the Wagner Tuba was invented in the 1850s by the composer for his Ring Cycle to bridge the sounds of horn and trombones, the holztrompete's details are more nebulous.
Wagner wrote the notes for an English horn but included a footnote to his score saying it should have “the effect of a very powerful natural instrument, such as the alphorn.” As pointed out in research by Daniël Vernooij, Wagner added in a June 15, 1861, letter to violinist and conductor Heinrich Esser that he wanted it to be “at least three feet long, made of wood, almost trumpet-like, slightly curved downwards so that the bell is open to the side.”
While a wood trumpet was used at the opera’s premiere, Wagner’s Bayreuth Festival in Germany switched in 1891 to a newly created woodwind called the Heckel-clarina, which resembled a soprano saxophone. Conductor Hans Richter replaced that at Bayreuth in 1902 with a tárogató, a woodwind common to Hungarian folk music. The tárogató was used by the Met when James Levine conducted “Tristan” from 1981 through 2008.
Mitch Weiss, a Met clarinet for 38 years, took over the tárogató in the 1980s from Roger Hiller.
“One day he said, `I’m sick and tired of playing this. You play it.′ And he handed me the tárogató,” recalled Weiss, now 93.
And then, Weiss had to audition for Levine alongside principal trumpet Mel Broiles.
“We each had to play the solo,” Weiss said. “I played it on a tárogató and the first trumpet played it on a low horn. And Jimmy said: `Tárogató plays it.'”
“The Hungarians used it as a battle cry instrument because it was very loud,” said Dean LeBlanc, a Met orchestra clarinet and bass clarinet who played the tárogató in the 2016 production conducted by Simon Rattle.
When Daniel Barenboim led the opera at the Met later in 2008, he brought his own holztrompete.
“He pulled out this thing. I’m like: What in the world?” Hunter recalled. He said Barenboim told him, “'This is what we use at Bayreuth.'”
Barenboim took the horn with him after the run. Thomas Lausmann, hired in 2019 as the Met’s director of music administration, ordered a new one to be manufactured by Thein Brass in Bremen, Germany, which built its initial version for the Hamburg State Opera.
“They recreated an instrument that they believed would come very, very close to the instrument Wagner would have had in his time,” Lausmann said.
Hunter said the bells of the Barenboim and current Met version are slightly different. Martin Wagemann, principal trumpet of the Deutsch Oper Berlin, has played the Holztrompete at Bayreuth since 2018. He uses different versions at each hall.
“The Deutsche Oper trumpet sounds slightly darker and woodier, but it is softer and therefore harder to articulate,” Wagemann wrote in an email. “The Bayreuth instrument has slightly better intonation and a brighter sound, which allows for clearer articulation — something you need in the Bayreuth acoustic.”
Hunter compared the holztrompete to a bugle. Its one valve lowers the notes down a step — a trumpet has three valves.
“On a regular trumpet, there’s slides you can adjust with pitch but with this, there is no adjustment,” Hunter said.
Preparing for the mostly sold-out run through April 4, Hunter practiced for a month in the living room of his Upper West Side apartment, with an audience of his wife — who is a pianist — and their children.
“If the kids like it, then I know it’s OK,” Hunter said. “It’s like the food. If they eat the food, it means you did a good job.”
Hunter finishes the first act six stories above the stage in The Domes at the tip of the auditorium, where the banda of trumpets and trombones loudly greets Tristan's ship in Cornwall. The boat's arrival at Monday's production premiere also signaled Hunter's departure: He had about three hours until the wooden horn was needed.
“I left to put my daughters to sleep, relieve grandpa and wait for my wife to return from work,” Hunter said.
