By Scott Cantrell [Dallas Morning News, 13 December 2008]
NEW YORK—For both performers and audiences, an opera as long as Tristan und Isolde —five hours Friday night at the Metropolitan Opera —challenges concentration. Imagine then, just off the center of your view of the Met stage, a woman fiddling with her PDA, flashing green light and all. That was my experience for the first 30 minutes of the opera’s last act Friday. Oh, for some of Isolde’s death potion…