Wagner described his epoch-making Tristan und Isolde as a monument erected to the ‘most beautiful dream’ of happiness in love, implying that this is an illusion lying beyond everyday reality, probably never to be reached in this world or life. Carmen Jakobi’s production for Longborough (revived from 2015 and 2017) is inspired by Jungian psychology and resides in the half-light between day and night – that realm of transition which the two central protagonists often talk about navigating in their desperate search away from the glare of the former where their illicit passion can’t be tolerated or understood, to the darkness of the latter where they can sink into eternal fulfilment and oblivion anonymously. The minimalist set is simple and devoid of obviously functional objects, evidently inspired by Wieland Wagner’s post-War productions at Bayreuth. Even the basic symbols of Wagner’s original scenography such as the boat of Act One, and the garden and trees of the Second, are largely dispensed with. It is a setting for the ‘choreography of souls’ as Jakobi puts it, unfolding in a virtually timeless world rather than as an outward narrative subject to the ordinary rules of cause and effect.
But for all that – and captivating as it undeniably is – there are still enough pointers in this production to suggest that there is a developmental process at work, even if not a straightforwardly linear one, with past and future blending in a vague present of dimly perceived concepts. The implied boat’s sail of Act One forms a backdrop to the whole opera, like a veil or gauze lit in chiaroscuro, hypnotising us into the drama’s noumenal world during the Prelude with its subtle shifts of colour in a spectrum of blue and purple, the latter an abstraction of the sea which is Wagner’s allegory for the same psychological journey. Although the sail does obscure Tristan until Isolde calls him to confront her, when lifted for the first time it reveals his form in silhouette, an elemental figure of the masculine to encounter Isolde’s feminine; tellingly, it occurs at the point in which she recalls the moment when she had been ready to stab him for killing her fiancé Morold, but their eyes met in a first awkward act of love. As a metaphorical veil of the mind or memory, it is a screen which blocks out some of the hateful light – and experience of the everyday – which Tristan and Isolde seek to escape; or serves as a partition beyond which everyday reality can pass and be sealed off as the lovers come closer to their desired obliteration, for instance the slab that stands as some sort of trunk or tower in Act Two then appears as on the other side as merely the shadow of a watch tower in Act Three.
In the context of Schopenhauer’s philosophy of the negation of the will which exerted a profound influence upon Wagner in the composition of this work, it is striking that the protagonists’ fateful drinking of the potion at the climactic moment of Act One (which they believe to be of death, but is really the love potion) is pre-empted by their miming of that action at the equivalent musical moment in the Prelude, as though it is something they have been actively willing for some time past, rather than forced upon them by dint of desperate circumstances in the heat of the moment before the boat lands in Cornwall to meet King Marke. Furthermore, whereas in Wagner’s scenario for the fight between Melot and Tristan in Act Two the latter merely allows his sword to drop for Melot to strike him, here Tristan then deliberately directs Melot’s sword and wilfully thrusts it into his side to deliver the deadly blow that, evidently, he has long been seeking. The final indication of the lovers’ willed journey to deathly transcendence is that Isolde doesn’t simply swoon over Tristan’s corpse during the Liebestod – called by Wagner her ‘transfiguration’ in any case – but has her arms half raised, and eyes and head tilted upwards, exactly like the figure of Mary in Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin, the famous altarpiece of the Frari church at Venice, which it is known inspired Wagner while he worked on the opera in that city. That gesture itself is also foreshadowed by Tristan’s similar benedictory stance over Isolde’s recumbent figure in a passionate moment during the Act Two duet, again evoking an ambiguous – but no less meaningful – switching between forwards and backwards, future and past in this vision of the work. Despite the generally elusive and rarefied atmosphere, as though wrapped up in the lovers’ trance, this production is so much more psychologically insightful and suggestive than, say, the rather static interpretation of their dream in Nicholas Lehnhoff’s production for Glyndebourne.
Vocal performances are equally purposeful. Peter Wedd’s Tristan exudes considerable vigour, even in Act Three as he languishes; his performance is grounded in a supple voice that often has the solid tone of a baritone reaching up into the tenor range with shades of such a Heldentenor as Wolfgang Windgassen. Catharine Woodward displays steely ardour and resolve as Isolde, cutting through the music’s white heat decisively, and holding back until the Liebestod for more lyrical tenderness, even if her physical rapport with Tristan on stage is muted.
Catherine Carby’s Brangäne yields nothing vocally to Isolde – she is bold and forthright, where the character is often depicted musically as more retiring, but melds her soaring legato seamlessly with the orchestra in the two passages of Act Two as she keeps watch over the lovers. Robert Hayward’s Kurwenal is likewise a stalwart servant to Tristan, suitably gloating in taunting Isolde on the way to Cornwall in Act One, and providing earnest support to the ailing knight in Act Three where he also gives physical comfort in a closer embrace with his master than any in which the latter and Isolde engage at any point. Alastair Miles is also a less resigned and wearied Marke than some, expressing not only disappointment but positive anxiety and bewilderment in his monologue, and palpable grief in the closing section of Act Three.
Anthony Negus (deservedly made a CBE in this year’s honours list) conducts a masterful account of the score that is infamous for its apparent lack of structure and almost endless, fruitless search for resolution. He doesn’t simply preside with a commanding sweep over the music’s continuous search, but shapes and points its direction even when it proceeds at a comparatively slow and seemingly aimless tempo. In other hands the dangerously slow way with the opening bars may become unstuck, but here it maintains unfaltering tension, as subsequently throughout. That also papers over the odd crack in the orchestral sonority when the already smaller forces of the Longborough Festival Orchestra are reduced to a smaller chamber ensemble for quieter passages and the breaks between notes in Wagner’s ever-extending melos become audible. But in general, the orchestral and choral forces are proportionate to the compact space of the auditorium so that there is otherwise no loss of grandeur or power in the music’s overall thrust, nor in the rigour of their execution.
In no sense does this production’s smaller scale register as a compromise of Wagner’s colossal, overwhelming vision. If anything, it affords the audience the rare privilege of being brought right within the heady, charged bubble of Tristan and Isolde’s passionate world, which usually plays out only in much larger theatres. This performance would be a creditable achievement by a house of any size; on this more intimate level it’s an extraordinary experience, as any performance of Tristan should be.
Curtis Rogers
Tristan und Isolde
Composer and libretto: Richard Wagner
Cast and Production Staff:
Tristan – Peter Wedd; Isolde – Catharine Woodward; Brangäne – Catherine Carby; Marke – Alastair Miles; Kurwenal – Robert Hayward; Melot – Brian Smith Walters; Shepherd – Peter Bronder; Sailor – Tobias Campos; Helmsman – Fraser Robinson
Director – Carmen Jakobi; Set and Costume Designer – Kimie Nakano; Lighting Designer – Ben Ormerdo; Movement Director and Intimacy Co-ordinator – Lucy Cullingford; Longborough Festival Chorus and Orchestra; Conductor – Anthony Negus
Longborough Festival Opera, Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, UK; 20 June 2026
All photos by Matthew Williams-Ellis