Tristan und Isolde is one of the greatest challenges that an opera house can take on, in some ways the greatest of all. So it is wonderful to be able to report that at Grange Park it has been mounted with a large degree of success, and that most of the things that are wrong with it could easily be righted, though they won’t be. The most remarkable thing about it is the level of singing, almost uniformly high, and certainly with no weak link. Isolde is Alwyn Mellor, Longborough’s Brünnhilde, and also scheduled to sing that role for Opera North and for Seattle. Besides her impressive voice, she has plenty of temperament, and encompasses the whole of Isolde’s emotional range, from the fury and frustration and resulting irony of Act I, to the excited and expectant woman in love of Act II, to the at first distraught and finally transfigured heroine of Act III. The only things that worried me about her singing were a shortness of breath on what should have been sustained high notes, and a tendency to squeeze into notes. How long it is, though, since I saw so complete a realisation of this role, and one which will certainly grow much further.
The Tristan is the veteran Richard Berkeley-Steele, now in his late fifties, but neither looking nor sounding it. He is a rather wooden actor, and did little more than stand around in Act I, apart from an unfortunate attack of what appeared to be vomiting brought on by the love potion, and sit around in Act III. But his voice is pleasant, and at times heroic; and in the most moving passage of all, perhaps, Tristan’s invitation to Isolde to follow him to the ‘Wunderreich der Nacht’ near the end of Act II, he was profound and inward. It is probably the director’s fault rather than the singers’ that chemistry between the lovers was less than ideal.
David Fielding, who designed the sets as well as directing the action, didn’t help by locating Act II in a hotel bedroom, though one which metamorphosed in the middle of the love duet, after the lovers had turned back the bed sheets neatly, into a forest, which in turn gave way to a solar eclipse. The action seemed to be mainly set in the present, no director nowadays daring to risk anything else; but that does rob Tristan of some of its romantic atmosphere. No one can pretend that turning off the overhead light in a hotel room is as powerful and moving a symbol as throwing down a flaming torch, which is what Wagner naively asked for.
Not that symbols were in short supply. Act III, the most desolate in all drama, was strewn with them, a giant goblet on its side emerging from the left while an immense skull moved in from the right, topped by a massive knife lowered from the flies — or was that Act II? And in case people couldn’t follow the surtitles, Tristan as a young boy wandered around — some terribly self-conscious acting here — playing with a globe, a toy fortress, a little boat; while Tristan’s memories of his parents’ deaths were abetted by a woman in white and a bloodied soldier in combats. Wagner was a consummate dramatist; it would be sensible as well as courteous to follow his instructions.
Hardly space to do justice to the rest of the cast, fine as they were. But Clive Bayley’s King Mark must be mentioned, because it is the most complex, complete realisation of this moving role that I have ever seen and heard. The English Chamber Orchestra, on magnificent form throughout, is conducted by Stephen Barlow, not a natural Wagnerian; but things improved after an Act I which lacked tension and seemed all to be mezzoforte. Most strikingly, Act II, despite the disastrous cut that was inflicted on it, as of course it often is (no excuse), was as overpowering as one always feels it should he but it hardly ever is. All told a great, unforgettable evening.
Everything, in life and art, withers in the incandescence of Wagner’s genius, so it is hardly surprising that Nico Muhly’s Two Boys, premièred by English National Opera, after a ceaseless flow of media hype, should seem so little worthy of attention. But even in proximity to other recent duds, this is a feeble sub-Glassian piece, and Bartlett Sher’s brilliant production at best acts as a very temporary concealment of its vacuity. The underside of the internet is hardly news, and John Berry’s claim, in the programme, that ‘opera can represent strong political and social stories…more successfully than any other arts medium’ is plainly false. If it’s a matter of violence and sex, then Dennis Cooper’s brilliant and disturbing novel The Sluts does it far more effectively and economically. Whatever the merits of the production, the miserable level of musical ideas in Two Boys disqualifies it from serious consideration.
Comments