Past Production Reviews
1Act II of Tristan und Isolde is the ‘beating heart’ of the opera and its anxious beats can be clearly heard in its opening music. The following 70-or-so minutes have almost continuously melodious music, often with unresolved, aching, harmonies. Tristan and Isolde are infatuated with each other after their true feelings are unleashed by a potion and their illicit passion can only be consummated through the blessed oblivion of eternal night. Wagner’s intoxicating music draws the listener uniquely into the powerful trajectory of the characters’ abandoned emotions – or at least it should. As is to be expected, the LSO played superbly for Daniel Harding who seems to have a keen ear for orchestral detail and kept a propulsive control on the sweeping arcs of Wagner’s incandescent music. More importantly from where I sat, the singers were never drowned by the climactic outbursts and there was a palpable frisson to the moments of ecstasy and great portent.
