Michael Tanner

Twin peaks | 22 June 2017

<p class="p1"><span class="s1">Plus: the main musical satisfaction of Garsington’s new Pelléas et Mélisande was the intense playing of the Philharmonia Orchestra</span></p>

In an essay called ‘Wagner’s fluids’, Susan Sontag concludes, ‘The depth and grandeur of feeling of which Wagner is capable is combined in his greatest work with an extraordinary delicacy in the depiction of emotion. It is this delicacy that may finally convince us that we are indeed in the presence of that rarest of achievements in art, the reinvention of sublimity.’ For a performance of any of Wagner’s mature works, either we feel we are in the presence of sublimity or the whole thing is a frustrating waste of time, as almost all performances are.

At Longborough, which this year has revived its 2015 production of Tristan und Isolde, the combination of depth, grandeur and delicacy of emotion are, for once, successfully present, and the result is one of the most exalting experiences I have had in the opera house. What was intermittently present in 2015 is continuously and therefore cumulatively present this year. Many of the ingredients that were there two years ago are still there, above all the conducting of Anthony Negus, whose way with Tristan is less broad than his mentor Goodall’s, but otherwise very similar: this is Wagnerian bel canto, but with no feeling of miniaturisation. Negus searches for, and invariably finds, the warm unfolding melody throughout the work, and gets his singers and his superb orchestra to do the same.

The most important change of cast is the Isolde of Lee Bisset. Two years ago Rachel Nicholls was powerful and passionate, sometimes almost too loud, but Bisset has a greater regal presence, a richer tone, and integrates passages that can sound like mere declamation into the overall forward pressure of the drama. She and the Tristan of Peter Wedd make the most convincing couple I have ever seen in this work.

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