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There have been more passionate stagings of this opera, but it would be hard to find one which makes its essential message so seductive
Nicholas Lehnhoff’s production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde returned to Glyndebourne last night in its fourth revival, which proved to be richly deserved. It breathes a riveting mythic fatefulness, and yet Wagner’s drama of an obsessive love also seems touchingly human.
The production revived with meticulous care by Daniel Dooner is mercifully free of fashionable contemporary references. Lehnhoff’s production harks back to the vast abstractions of the Wieland Wagner era at Wagner’s own theatre in Bayreuth, when the lovers seemed to float in some timeless, cosmic space. Here there’s an extra twist. The characters are trapped in a huge elliptical vortex designed by Ronald Aeschlimann, which carries the eye back to a void, surely representing death. When Tristan and Isolde come closer that void takes on a spiritually blue or carnally golden glow, but when the everyday world conspires to separate them, the longed-for oblivion is shut off.
The sheaf of concentric platforms curving up as they retreat to the back is awkward for the performers, who find themselves walking up sharp inclines. But the directors manage this cramped space ingeniously, with Robin Carter’s beautiful lighting designs providing telling hints of the ship’s saloon of the first act, the dark forest of the second and the sea-surrounded castle of the third.
All this abstract, tableau-like beauty might have seemed cold, but the stellar performances warded off that danger. Miina-Liisa Värelä as Isolde was pearly-voiced and intimate in a way one rarely hears in this role, and she caught Isolde’s bitter sarcasm against Tristan in Act One (before the love-potion has worked its magic) and her mad recklessness in the second. Stuart Skelton as Tristan was tremendous in his long Act Three monologue, where he struggles to understand himself. Some might say their relationship was more philosophical than madly passionate; they often gazed at the heavens or us rather than each other. But that’s hardly a fault in an opera which is as much a discourse on love and death as a drama.
Of the other roles, Karen Cargill was in sumptuous voice as Isolde’s maid Brangäne (all praise too to Marlene Lichtenberg who mimed the role with such expressive grace, as Cargill was injured and had to sing off-stage). Franz-Josef Selig was excessively craggy-voiced as the betrayed King Marke, but one certainly felt his pain. The Chinese bass-baritone Shenyang was both moving and vocally subtle as Tristan’s faithful friend Tristan. The London Philharmonic Orchestra performed with rich magnificence, as did the Glyndebourne Chorus, and conductor Robin Ticciati paced everything beautifully, balancing a vast spaciousness with moments of telling brusqueness.
At the end Värelä sang Isolde’s famous Love Death right at the back, which was hardly ideal for sound. But it was dramatically essential. She and Tristan had to be there, at the vortex’s centre, poised right on the edge of the oblivion they’ve always been seeking. I’ve seen more wildly intense productions of this opera, but never one which makes its essential message seem so beautiful and seductive.
Tristan and Isolde is at Glyndebourne Festival Opera until August 25; glyndebourne.com
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