Tristan und Isolde

Glyndebourne Festival Opera, Lewes

A German critic once truly opined that, in Tristan und Isolde, ‘on the stage walk sounds, not people’. Wagner was desperate to realise through art the perfect love which he couldn’t realise in life, and with this opera he found his creative key in the concept of an idealised world behind the tangible and visible one. He characterised these alternative worlds by the contrast between the banality of day, and the mystery of night.

For some people the resulting opera is a religious work on a par with Bach’s St Matthew Passion; for others it’s simply a glorification of sex. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche extolled its ‘dangerous fascination, its shuddering and sweet infinity’.

And in Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s exquisite Glyndebourne production, now back in revival, the light-suffused, powder-blue universe which designer Roland Aeschlimann has conjured up beautifully suggests that infinity. And so does the music, with its melodies which seem to go on for ever.

Stuart Skelton as Tristan and Miina-Liisa Värelä as Isolde ©ASH

Not much ‘happens’ in the medieval story where – lured by the prospect of endless sexual rapture – two people are drawn by fate into a web of infidelity and betrayal. Tristan is taking Isolde to consummate her loveless marriage to King Mark of Cornwall, and he’s crippled with guilt for having killed Isolde’s real lover; he wants to drink poison in atonement.

But Isolde’s maid Brangane covertly substitutes a love potion for the poisoned one he thought he was drinking, and Isolde gets a nip of that too: as a result, what was meant to be a business relationship turns into a mutual passion. Looking into each other’s eyes, and defying the outrage of everyone around them, Tristan and Isolde sing their new credo in a state of calm ecstasy: ‘We must die together, eternally without end, without waking, without fearing, nameless in love’s embrace, to live only for love.’ And they do die together.

An intellectual idea may underpin the work, but this production speaks primarily to the senses. The singers stand like statues as they deliver their intricate arias; under Robin Ticciati’s fastidious direction, the woodwinds create spells of irresistible gorgeousness.

The vocal challenges are huge, and most are successfully met. Franz-Josef Selig makes a moving King Marke, and Karen Cargill – injured in rehearsal by falling on the crazily tricky set – sings Brangäne magnificently from the wings while an actor walks through her part on stage. On first night Stuart Skelton didn’t find the hoped-for magic as Tristan, but Miina-Liisa Värelä’s heroic Isolde sang plangently to the heavens, and their protracted Liebestod – ‘love-death’ – passed in a long and lovely trance.