Poster Power -- Two Sumptuous Images Lure Fans Of `Tristan Und Isolde'

Poster fans, opera lovers and romantics take note: the most popular poster ever produced in Seattle is about to be reprinted. After 17 years of regularly fielding calls from people trying to get their hands on one, the Seattle Opera is reprinting the extraordinarily successful - not to mention extremely sexy - poster for the company's 1981 production of Richard Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde."

The reprinting of the poster, based on a painting by California artist David Kreitzer, coincides with the opera's August production of "Tristan und Isolde," the first time since 1981 that Seattle has mounted Wagner's tragedy about star-crossed lovers, betrayal, passion and death.

But this year there's an added twist. Because the opera wants to distinguish this year's production from the one 17 years ago - the staging, costumes, design and direction are all new - it is also producing a new poster based on a painting by Baltimore artist Grace Hartigan.

Though it's not exactly being billed as the battle of the posters, it will be interesting to see if Hartigan's colorful, modernistic, slightly cubist image becomes as collectible as Kreitzer's dark, unabashedly sensuous painting of beautiful young lovers in what appears to be a post-coital slumber.

The opera is using both the reprinted Kreizter poster and the new Hartigan poster for marketing purposes. New and renewing subscribers who buy a five-production subscription before May 15 get

their choice of either poster for free. Others can buy either poster for $30 by placing orders with the Seattle Opera Guild, 206-282-6191. The posters will be available in early June.

With the opera planning to print 7,000 of the Kreitzer reprints and 3,000 of the new Hartigan posters, it is questionable how many will be left for nonsubscribers. Linda Prather, the opera's marketing manager, says the company expects nearly 7,000 households to subscribe to the 1998-99 season. Assuming they all take one poster, that would leave perhaps 3,000 posters for nonsubscribers.

Prather says the opera isn't expecting to make much money directly from poster sales, even though Boeing is donating the printing costs. The two artists have been paid fees for the use of their images.

"It's beneficial for us to have people subscribe early," said Prather, "and for people to subscribe to five operas rather than three . . . And we wanted there to be only a specific number of the posters on the market because we wanted something special for our subscribers."

Kreitzer, an opera lover (he's especially fond of Wagner) who's been married to two operatic sopranos, gets a good chuckle out of the idea that he may go down in regional art history as the guy who painted the hot "Tristan und Isolde" image. Kreitzer usually paints realistic landscapes. In this area, his landscapes are shown at Nelson/Rovzar Gallery in Kirkland.

Kreitzer lives near Morro Bay on California's central coast, and his work is sold by dealers in New York, Los Angeles and elsewhere. But it was his passion for opera that led to the "Tristan und Isolde" poster, not to mention both his wives.

In 1979 he came to Seattle to see the opera perform Wagner's "Ring Cycle," and by luck he met someone who introduced him to Jean Cook, a dramatic soprano who was in the production. They later married. At her encouragement, he made several paintings or drawings that the opera turned into posters. He did the images for the opera's 1981-82 season: "Siegfried" in 1982 and "Manon Lescaut" in 1981.

But his "Tristan und Isolde" painting became so popular that Kreitzer was soon getting calls from rock radio stations wanting to interview him about what it all meant.

Though the lovers appear to be sleeping, the poster captures the moment when Tristan, the young knight, is already dead, and Isolde is waiting to die of a broken heart. She has already sung the "Liebestod," one of the most hauntingly beautiful soprano arias ever written, and this being 19th-century German opera, she dies soon after. The scene depicts the climax of the opera, the moment after Isolde finishes her aria, with all its romantic, theatrical and sexual overtones.

With their fabulously curly and matching tresses floating behind them as though in water (images of the dead Ophelia come to mind), it's obvious that death or its imminence has only made the pair even more gorgeous. His muscled shoulders and her exposed throat and cleavage lend added sensuousness to the image's sinuous composition.

The original painting, a 40-inch by 20-inch watercolor, still hangs in Kreitzer's home, which he now shares with his second wife, internationally acclaimed mezzo-soprano Jacalyn Bower-Kreitzer. (Cook died of breast cancer in 1986.) Kreitzer, who also met Bower-Kreitzer when she was performing in Seattle, hopes to travel here in August to see this production.

"I'd be happy to sign posters, though the opera hasn't exactly asked me to," he said.

Meanwhile, those more attracted to hot colors and a more formal composition that looks straight out of a medieval pageant may prefer Hartigan's elegant image, taken from a large oil she painted in 1996.

"To be very frank, I am not an opera fan," said Hartigan, a one-time abstract expressionist who switched to figurative painting a couple of decades ago. She now regularly shows her work in galleries in Baltimore, New York and elsewhere, and is the director of the graduate school of painting at the Maryland Institute of Art.

"But about 10 years ago I started doing paintings of opera characters. I love the big gestures in opera, the feeling that these people are larger than life. Their gestures, their costumes, everything about them is too extravagant for real life. But for painting, it's wonderful."

The painting is now in Hartigan's Baltimore studio. Hartigan says she is pleased it is being used by the Seattle Opera but doubts she will come to Seattle in August.

Hartigan's painting of Tristan and Isolde came to the attention of the Seattle Opera when opera staff member Susan Todd spotted it in an art magazine.

"I like the way the painting blended Celtic, medieval and Germanic myth," said Todd. "It looks a little like a stained-glass window. Tristan and Isolde is a Celtic myth, so it's very appropriate. Also I just liked the strength of the composition. So did everyone else. It's very beautiful."