Richard Bratby

Neither Tristan nor Isolde quite convinced: Glyndebourne’s Tristan und Isolde reviewed

For a real Gesamtkunstwerk you ought to have been at Opera Holland Park's exuberant, inventive and oddly touching Pirates of Penzance

The lovers spent a lot of time standing apart: Tristan (Simon O’Neill) and Isolde (Miina-Liisa Värelä) with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and conductor Robin Ticciati. Credit: © Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photo: Bill Cooper 
issue 21 August 2021

Glyndebourne is nothing if not honest. ‘In response to the ongoing Covid-19 restrictions our 2021 performances of Tristan und Isolde will be presented as a concert staging, after the 2003 production by Nikolaus Lehnhoff’, says the programme, and what we get is not a full production but a compromise imposed by the peculiar circumstances of August 2021. The London Philharmonic Orchestra huddles on stage. Behind them the back wall glows and fades in washes of blue and pink; in front, a stepped apron extends over the redundant orchestra pit. The singers slip on and off from the wings or, in a basic but effective trick of lighting design, appear to materialise from the embracing darkness.

It’s an approach to Wagner that can work well. Lehnhoff learned his craft under Wieland Wagner, whose postwar Bayreuth productions — dark abstract forms, ritualised action, pools of light — continue to shape modern visualisations of his grandfather’s work.

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