Tristan und Isolde

Tristan Goes Nineteenth Century

Tristan und Isolde

by Richard Wagner

Grange Park Opera at the Theatre in the Woods, West Horsley until 9^th July

Review by Patrick Shorrock

Wagner wrote Tristan und Isolde as a break from writing the Ring Cycle.  It was originally intended to be a small scale chamber opera.  This feels a bit of a bad joke when the finished result is, ahem, Wagnerian in length, contains two of the most physically demanding roles in all opera, and shattered tonality as the 19^th Century knew it for ever, by means of the infamous Tristan chord that takes the whole opera to be resolved.

Nevertheless, there is an awful lot to be said for remembering the piece’s origins and performing it in a smaller scale opera house.  From that point of view, Grange Park Opera’s lovely Theatre in the Woods is the perfect venue.  The singers can easily be heard without having to force their voices – indeed they often sounded heroically loud – and there is a real sense of intimacy with the stage.  Stephen Barlow’s conducting takes a rather measured approach to this most volcanically passionate of scores.  This is not an interpretation in which the orchestra score violently sweeps everything before it (which, I must admit, is my preference when someone is conducting Tristan).  But Barlow lets the score breathe and gives his singers space.  There is no point in generating tension if it sags afterward, and Barlow never lets this happen.  The chorus in Act One and Brangane in Act Two sang from the auditorium and were thrillingly vivid.

Charles Edwards’s production (he also designed the sets) is crammed with clever ideas, some quietly original and subversive (Marke eavesdropping silently on the lovers towards the end of the duet) others rather baffling (Kurwenal seems to die twice in Act Three).  But his approach pays dividends in all sorts of ways.  Setting the opera in the period of its composition rather than something vaguely Arthurian makes a lot of sense, even if the Irish backstory, with its enforced tribute and swordfights, seems even more implausible.

Act One opens on a furious Isolde in Victorian lingerie tossing around on her bed and throwing pillows on the floor – an accurate depiction of the effect of patriarchy on nineteenth century women.  Rachel Nicholls is one of the most convincing Isoldes I’ve ever seen.  The results are not always vocally pretty, but she means every note that she sings, and, at her best, sounds glorious.  Act Two is set not in a garden but in a suffocating Victorian drawing room with pot plants and gas lamps; this, I think, is how it must have been in the Villa Wesendonck, when Wagner was being sponsored by millionaire Otto Wesendonck, while having an affair with Otto’s wife, which was supposedly the inspiration for the opera.  (Perhaps Isolde making a cup of tea for Brangane – milk and two sugars – was making it a bit too middle class.)  The passionate urgency Nicholls brings to the Liebestod is thrilling and exceptional, as she removes her 19^th Century dress to reveal a vest and jeans and demands of the orchestra Do I Alone Hear This Tune?   Most singers relax into concert mode here, but Nicholls burns with intensity.   Unable to go through the door that Tristan left by at his death in a blaze of yellow light, she ranges over the stage and exits another way, having left the 19^th Century – as well as Tristan behind – as dry ice invades the stage.

Most directors seem take a minimalist approach to the Liebestod – staging is arguably redundant – and just confine themselves to a bit of fancy lighting.  I rather liked the way that Edwards tries a bit harder with a scenically ambiguous Act Three (Is it interior or exterior?) that seems to include something like the original stage design for the premiere of the opera as a backdrop.  What this all means is not obvious, but I wonder if we are being encouraged to see Isolde as having put Tristan and his morbid death obsession behind her and wanting to live as an independent woman in the 21^st Century.  This staging leaves you seeing Tristan as a bit of a gaslighter; killing Isolde’s fiancé; then coming to her in disguise to have his wounds cured and rewarding her – when she could kill him and doesn’t – by arranging for her to be married off to his uncle.  When she says that this is undendurable and suggests a suicide pact, he agrees, only to suck her into his morbid death obsession. 

This is an opera where every act ends with a suicide attempt or at least a willed death, a point Edwards underlines by having Tristan and Isolde attempt to conclude their Act Two duet by drinking the death potion, only to be thwarted again by Brangane and having Tristan taunt Melot by walking into the gun he is brandishing so that he fires it.  This is a ferociously intelligent staging of the opera, willing to interrogate what this extraordinary piece may be about, but not sucking the emotion or the dramatic life out of it.

Grange Park Opera has gathered together a splendid cast.  Gwyne Hughes Jones is a vocally impressive Tristan if rather dramatically stolid and unbending in his be-medalled military uniform.  Wagner so often benefits from a vocally Italianate approach; and this is the repertoire in which Hughes Jones has generally specialised, including a very fine Otello for Grange Park last year.  Matthew Rose – a wonderful Wotan to Nicholls’ Brunhilde in the ENO’s excellent recent Valkyrie – was a forcefully (almost too forcefully) sung Marke: terrifying in his Victorian top hatted capitalist get up in Act One and then vulnerable in his dressing gown for Act Two (fine costumes by Gabrielle Dalton).  Christine Rice’s excellent diction and innate musicality almost distracted from the thought that maybe the Wagner repertoire is not quite right for her.  Further fine support came from Mark Le Brocq’s nasty Melot and David’s Stout’s dogged Kurwenal.

Patrick Shorrock, June 2023

Photography by Marc Brenner and Alistair Muir