Spazju Kreattiv brings the 2016/7 Met opera global film-theatre season to Maltese audiences via live and encore performances screened at the cinema of St James Cavalier.

This year’s season kicks off tomorrow with a performance of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, a breath-taking meditation on love and death that holds a unique place in the opera world. Its music has astounded, infuriated and inspired since it was first heard back in 1865 at the Munich Court Theatre. The titular roles are now held to be among the most extraordinarily demanding in opera.

Tomorrow’s performance is conducted by world-renowned Simon Rattle and features Swedish Nina Stemme in the role of Isolde and Australian Stuart Skelton as Tristan.

Stemme, considered to be one of the finest Wagnerian sopranos nowadays, commented: “[Singing] Isolde requires a sort of state of being. You have to enter the Tristan and Isolde world completely. You have to give it a 100 per cent all the time. It’s a big journey. It’s a marathon.”

The vocal challenges, the sumptuous symphonic scale of the orchestral writing and the mystical nature of the story, with its opportunities for creative visual design, make this awe-inspiring work a phenomenon of the repertory. The opera was enormously influential with Western classical composers providing direct inspiration to Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schönberg and Benjamin Britten, among many.

■ Tomorrow’s screening at 6pm at St James Cavalier in Valletta is live, with encores on Sunday, November 13, at 5pm and Sunday, January 8, 2017 at 2.30pm. For tickets, visit kreattivita.org. Block tickets for the season are also available.

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