May 22. Richard Wagner’s birthday. Anyone else looking forward to this endurance test with the Philadelphia Orchestra? 4 and ½ blissful hours of blood clot-inducing “Tristan und Isolde.”

This tongue-in-cheek teaser has been receiving a mixed reaction. I happen to think it’s very funny, but on message boards, music chats, and social media, it’s been getting more than its share of vitriol. Evidently, there are some real Yannick haters out there. And I am sorry to have to admit, classical music still does have its stuffed shirts.

Thankfully, I spend as little time around them as I can. In fact, I’m not sure how close I am to any of them in real life. But you know how it is. These guys can come across as the most unassuming, mildest-mannered people, but give them the anonymity of the internet and they all turn into monsters.

It’s okay to have opinions – I’ve got plenty of them myself, and by no means am I satisfied with everything Yannick conducts, strictly from an interpretive standpoint – but lighten up. It’s just a teaser, and it’s supposed to be fun!

This “Tristan” is unlikely to be on a level of Wilhelm Furtwängler’s or Victor de Sabata’s, but it is an opportunity to hear one of the world’s great orchestras play Wagner’s hypnotic, narcotic, viscerally intense, revolutionary score without the distraction of the seemingly-inevitable, nihilistic Regietheater nonsense productions you’re likely to encounter these days at virtually any opera house that’s going to attempt a staging.

The Everest of “Tristan” is littered with the literal corpses of those who have attempted the climb. Not only have singers destroyed their voices, but conductors have actually died. Felix Mottl and Joseph Keilberth both dropped dead while conducting the second act. The very first Tristan, heldentenor Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, died suddenly at the age of 29, after only four performances.

In an interview given shortly before his death, Giuseppe Verdi said that he “stood in wonder and terror” before Wagner’s “Tristan.” Is it any wonder that Yannick is getting himself into shape?