The Stage

Tristan und Isolde

Published Friday 7 August 2009 at 12:30 by David Gutman

Torsten Kerl and Anja Kampe, who made their British stage debuts as Florestan and Leonore in Glyndebourne’s Fidelio (2006), return for a revival of the festival’s first ever Wagner staging (2003). That Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s production retains its allure is down to the set design of Roland Aeschlimann as lit by Robin Carter.

Eschewing the post-modern clutter endemic to recent Wagner realisations, the action takes place in and around a sort of transmogrified time tunnel, sixties TV-style. The grave beauty of the lighting is sufficient to banish any element of kitsch, transforming the concentric crescent space with lambent intimations of ship, dawn, womb and tomb.

Andrea Schmidt-Futterer’s medieval costumes seldom get in the way, an exception being the Ku Klux Klansman attire of Andrew Kennedy’s Shepherd. The overall concept might work better were characters treated more consistently as dream-like archetypes without minutely signalled human emotions or incongruous humanising movement. The broader picture is certainly seductive enough. The chorus is never seen.

Ecstatic and full-on, Anja Kampe fills the theatre with her big, rather coarse mezzo-ish sound, the Liebestod acquiring extra dramatic impact from the way her image fades finally into a pinpoint of light. Torsten Kerl’s Tristan, tired and nasal at times, keeps something in reserve for Act III. The Brangane is Sarah Connolly, a late stand-in whose focused tone, fine diction and concerned manner delight the Glyndebourne audience, although the voice lacks Wagnerian heft. There’s no lack of volume or gravitas in young Georg Zeppenfeld’s stoical King Marke.

Right down to the casting of the smaller parts, this is notably youthful Wagner. Glyndebourne’s music director, Vladimir Jurowski (age 37) directs pungently and with fervour, often pushing forward where the music could breathe more but securing great depth of string tone at the start of the final act. A less iconic style of production might better complement his virile take on Wagner’s sound-world.