Wagner’s ‘Tristan’ finds perfection at Longborough

Longborough Festival Opera made its name with Wagner operas, becoming a mini-Bayreuth in the Cotswolds, and next year will see a major new production of Wagner’s Meistersinger. This year however it gave us a very welcome revival of their 2015 production of Tristan und Isolde. I say very welcome because, unlike Bayreuth, Longborough don’t give prominent theatre directors the opportunity of trashing Wagner’s operas with absurd productions at odds with the music.

In the vast barn that founder Martin Graham turned into a magnificent opera house, productions are simple and to the point. The music is what counts, and in Anthony Negus they have a conductor who is fully capable of realising Wagner’s musical vision. At Longborough you go for the music, not the staging, though that was very effectively done under the direction of Negus’s wife, Carmen Jakobi. The trick here is the lighting whose subtle changes begin and end with blue, along with long robes that lend the participants dignity.

Tristan und Isolde is, after all, about people trying to do the honourable thing, as the power of love tilts the world against them, dragging the two main protagonists from the world of light into darkness (Dem Land, das Tristan meint, der Sonne Licht nicht scheint). Yet they are all doomed: Melot, Tristan’s erstwhile friend and advisor who nurses a secret desire for Isolde; Kurwenal, Tristan’s friend who defends his wounded master at his castle of Kareol in Brittany, and is honoured to die with him there; and both Tristan and Isolde, of course. In the end the only survivor among the main characters is Isolde’s maid Brangäne.

With Anthony Negus so very effective with the orchestral forces at his command, we also had a very fine cast. Peter Wedd made a forceful and unusually athletic looking Tristan, with Catherine Woodward, who has made a career in Germany and sung at Bayreuth, as a radiant and beautifully sung Isolde. Her maid Brangäne was the ever-reliable Catherine Carby, with Robert Hayward as Tristan’s man Kurwenal, and bass Alastair Miles as an utterly gripping King Marke. In the treacherous role of Melot, Brian Smith Walters was excellent, and I can’t help but mention Peter Bronder, who was a delight in the role of the Shepherd. As I watched Catherine Woodward on stage I thought: this is opera as it is meant to be. Who says the British can’t do it?

Indeed, this was all so much more enjoyable than Bayreuth. And, unlike that somewhat forlorn temple to Wagner’s genius, Longborough produces operas by other composers, this year seeing new productions of Verdi’s Macbeth, Handel’s Orlando, and Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel.

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