Scottish Opera: Tristan und Isolde

Theatre Royal, Glasgow 7/3/26

https://www.scottishopera.org.uk/shows/tristan-und-isolde/

Orchestra of Scottish Opera; Chorus of ‘Tristan und Isolde’; Stuart Stratford (conductor); Gwyn Hughes Jones (tenor); Katherine Broderick (soprano); Khatuna Mikaberidze (mezzo-soprano); Richard Wiegold (bass); Hansung Yoo (baritone); Mark Le Brocq (tenor); Shengzhi Ren (tenor); Edward Jowle (bass-baritone)

 When Scottish Opera’s 2025-26 season was first revealed and I was told it included a production of Wagner’s epic tale of doomed forbidden love, ‘Tristan und Isolde’, my first reaction was disbelief.  But no, it was actual, and on the mid-afternoon of 7th March, the first of only two semi-staged 5-hour performances, in German with English surtitles, opened with that extraordinary ground-breaking harmonically chromatic and tonally ambiguous Prelude.  The fully-augmented Wagnerian Orchestra of Scottish Opera was on-stage (with individually illuminated music stands and an additional 6 horns offstage for the beginning of Act II). Music Director  Stuart Stratford conducted.  Stage direction was by confirmed Wagnerian Justin Way.  The action took place in the front-of-stage, lit by Lizzie Powell.  There was no scenery but the principal cast were fully costumed by Lorna Price.  The all-male Chorus of ‘Tristan und Isolde’, mainly sailors in Act I, trained by Susannah Wapshott, occupied the front of one side of the side-stalls.

Tristan and Isolde’s back-story (they have history) is important and we learn it when the Irish princess Isolde relates it to her maid and confidante, Brangäne, shortly into Act I, on board a ship under Tristan’s command taking them to Cornwall, where Isolde is to be married to Tristan’s uncle, lord and master, the widower King Marke.  Tristan slew her betrothed, the warrior knight Morold, but was badly wounded himself in the fight.  Then, hearing of the famed healing powers of the Irish princess, he travelled under an assumed name to have his wounds treated.  She was not fooled by his disguise and drew a sword to avenge Morold.  But when their eyes met, she dropped the sword and instead nursed him back to health.  On his return to King Marke’s castle, Tristan courted “brownie points” with the King by urging him to remarry and suggesting a certain Irish princess.  He is dispatched back to Ireland to woo Isolde on the King’s behalf.  Mission accomplished, the vessel is en route back to Cornwall.

So, at the beginning of Act I, Isolde is having a bad day, to say the least.  Virtually captive, sailing towards an anticipated loveless marriage, now ignored by Tristan and enduring discourtesies from the ship’s crew, she sends Brangäne to ask Tristan for a meeting.  His refusal is the last straw that tips the love/hate balance, and she regrets not avenging the killing of Morold when she had the chance.  She instructs Brangäne how to prepare a poisonous death draught from her kit of potions.  She will refuse to disembark before Tristan drinks a “draught of atonement” with her, to expiate the killing of Morold.  They will both die.  In her company debut, English soprano Katherine Broderick, winner of the 2007 Kathleen Ferrier Award, owned the role.  Terrific stage presence was augmented by a blue robe and a reddish-blonde wig, giving us regal impatience (Irishwoman style), then vengeful resolve.  When Brangäne, out of devotion to her mistress, disobediently prepares a love potion instead, Isolde’s transformation is miraculous.  Of course, with Wagner, it’s all in the music, but when sung by a voice that is already being hailed as a fine Brünnhilde, it is pretty well optimal.  In Act II, the lovers experience the bliss and fulfilment of being united body, soul and mind. As they declare this to each other in the ultimate love duet, Wagner lets us eavesdrop.  It was fabulous.  They are discovered and in the ensuing affray, Tristan is mortally wounded.  In Act III, Isolde arrives, clad-shroud-white, too late to spend a final hour together, much less save him.  Katherine’s heartrending, transfiguring ‘Liebestod’, as she passes to join Tristan in eternal blissful night, was gloriously cathartic.  With phenomenal expressive range, this was a superb performance.

By pairing roles, Wagner avoids the fakeness of soliloquy and lets the audience eavesdrop as confidences are shared.  Thus the role of Brangäne is doubly crucial to the dramaturgy, both as driver of the plot and as Isolde’s confidante.  Georgian mezzo Khatuna Mikaberidze, in another company debut, brought a mature vocal instrument of impressive timbral, dynamic and expressive range to the role, matching Katherine in stage presence, with a blue robe, an ochre bodice and a cascading blonde wig.  Brangäne’s devotion to her mistress’ well-being means she tries to temper Isolde’s impulsive nature.  But she too is a creature of instinct, albeit a cautious one.  When she substitutes a love potion for the intended poison, the seemingly rash disobedience is not just to save Isolde from suicide, but also reveals an instinct rooted in truth and loyalty: the potion does not ‘cause’ all-consuming love; it merely unmasks what was already there.  Even through deception, Brangäne is a revealer of truth.  When the lovers, oblivious to the danger, are united in Act II, she is the voice of caution who keeps watch.  It is she who reveals the truth of the potion to King Marke, prompting his remorse and forgiveness in Act III.  Unfortunately they arrive at Tristan’s deathbed too late.  Khatuna’s performance was utterly convincing and she is another true Wagnerian.

Welsh tenor Gwyn Hughes Jones was our Tristan.  He is not a Wagnerian heldentenor and I am going to say immediately what an absolute breath of fresh air that was, especially in the love duet that occupies most of Act II.  Too often, the hectoring heldentenor tessitura and the reciprocative overblown harpyish shrieking thereby elicited from the soprano becomes a stereophonic ego-trip as a prelude to a suicide pact.  In such “interpretations”, when the lyrics and the accompanying score move from passion to philosophy, the duet flags.  Surely not what Wagner intended?  Gwyn was heroic, but also lyrical.  With Gwyn and Katherine, we heard two human beings engulfed in an all-encompassing, overwhelmingly transfigurative shared experience, mutually validative, a union of hearts, souls and minds.  The passion was real, but the philosophy (pure Schopenhauer, which Wagner had just read when the impulse to write the opera galvanised his creativity) made absolute sense too.  The greatest virtue is truth.  In the dark of the night, where the lovers give themselves unreservedly to each other, there is truth, what Schopenhauer called the ‘Will’. Daylight, by contrast, is the realm of rules, social conventions, obligations and loyalties, the world of appearances and performative fakery, what Schopenhauer called ‘Representation’.  The lovers, therefore, wish for ‘eternal night’.  Sadly, eternal night is, of course, death.  Surely that is what Wagner intended? That is certainly what we got in the Theatre Royal.  Tristan’s aloof coldness pre-potion is performative loyalty to King Marke, untruth as far as Schopenhauer is concerned.  How much more fake is his assumed identity when seeking healing from the woman whose betrothed he has slain, in the back-story?  But it is from Isolde, in the same back-story, that the first glimmer of prophetic truth emanates, when she drops the sword and tends his wounds.  The emotional intensity that Gwyn brought to Tristan’s delirium and death-throes was unforgettably heart-rending, both vocally and dramatically.  I have one further comment to make, which I could easily forego, but in the hope of the reader’s forgiveness, the context of merited praise already awarded, and with a nod to Schopenhauer’s primacy of unvarnished truth, I will let slip past my self-censorship.  If the opera-goer has a mental image of Tristan, it is perhaps a clean-shaven youngish man? Gwyn’s fabulous mature voice resides in a mature body -how could it not? – and, of course, faced with the choice of the perfect body or the perfect voice, the voice wins hands down.  But I hope I’ll be forgiven for flippantly asking, in a stage whisper: wouldn’t it be wonderful to have both?

It was after the dress rehearsal that Dingle Yandell, who was to have played King Marke, became indisposed.  It was therefore at very short notice that Welsh bass Richard Wiegold stepped into the breach to deliver a performance that betrayed no hint that he had not been in the company from the outset.  Clad in a sable-trimmed black robe, he hit the perfect blend of regal and vulnerable, visibly shaken by the revelation that his trusted and beloved nephew and knight Tristan, who had appeared to advocate and work to accomplish his remarriage, was actually an apparent traitor and adulterer.  What a voice and a stage presence!  It is really hard to credit that his operatic career was preceded by a decade as a professional cellist, as he commands the operatic stage.  Armed at last with the truth, the King arrives in Kareol too late to deliver his message of contrition and forgiveness to Tristan; his grief was poignantly real.  An excellent performance.

The closest thing to a baddie in the narrative is Melot, Tristan’s fellow-knight in the service of King Marke, clearly jealous of Tristan’s status as the King’s favourite.  English tenor Mark Le Brocq (a whimsical Vítek in ‘The Makropulos Affair’, Mao in ‘Nixon in China’ and Harry King in ‘Anthropocene’) was clad in a baddie-black leather greatcoat and cut a Iago-like figure.  Unaware of the potion, he sees the transformation in Tristan and the amorous glances between him and Isolde.  He warns the King, who returns from a hunting expedition to catch the lovers in flagrante delicto.  Whether his act of loyalty to the king is performative and self-serving is left ambiguous.  Tristan, knowing that Isolde will follow him into ‘eternal night’, taunts him with the accusation of wanting Isolde for himself.  As swords are drawn and they approach, Tristan advances towards his blade, embracing him as he is impaled on his sword.  Is Melot a baddie?  I don’t think so.  Another dramatically and vocally satisfying performance.

Just as Isolde has Brangäne solicitous for her wellbeing, Tristan has his squire Kurwenal.  In another Scottish Opera debut, Korean baritone Hansung Yoo reprised the role he had debuted to acclaim in the 2022-23 season of Deutsche Oper Berlin.  We first see Kurwenal delivering Tristan’s refusal (to meet Isolde) to Brangäne, compounding the insult by singing a ballad about Morold’s defeat and demise.  Even in the initially uncharismatic role, Hansung’s baritone is rich and warm.  Offhandedly announcing disembarkation despite Isolde’s protests helps to adumbrate her wretched emotional state.  The role changes when, towards the end of Act II, Kurwenal rushes to warn the lovers that the King has returned from his hunting trip and they are about to be discovered, too late to avert the horrific scenes that unfold, ending in Tristan being mortally wounded.  It is in Act III, in Tristan’s ancestral Breton home of Kareol, that the role comes alive.  He cares for the delirious Tristan who is close to death and drifting in and out of consciousness.  He has sent for Isolde, perhaps hoping against hope for her healing skills to work their magic, but at least that the lovers can be reunited before his death.  He waits for a ship to appear on the horizon.  When it does and he tells Tristan, the latter rips his bandages in his exultation and dies before she arrives.  But then a second ship is spotted approaching, bearing the King, Melot and Brangäne.  Misreading their intentions, which are conciliatory, he challenges, attacks and kills Melot, whom he blames for Tristan’s death, then dies himself from a grievous wound inflicted by Melot in the tussle.  This is Grand Opera.

For Kurwenal to reveal his state of mind without the use of soliloquy, he too needs a confidant.  For this, Wagner created a minor tenor role, the pipe-playing Shepherd, whom Kurwenal tasks with watching out for Isolde’s ship, periodically playing a sad melody until it appears, then a happy one when it does.  Chinese tenor Shengzhi Ren (Hokusai’s publisher Yohachi in ‘The Great Wave’) was clad in rustic woollens and looked the part.  Wagner’s score uses cor anglais for the pipe, but with a footnote suggesting that, should a better approximation be invented, it could be used instead.  I understand that Stuart Stratford had opted for an alto saxophone but, seeing no such credited in the programme, and my eyesight being not up to discerning one onstage, I am unable to confirm.  It certainly sounded like a sax.  Shengzhi also sang the brief cameo role of a sailor in Act I singing a ballad about his lost Irish maiden, adding to Isolde’s humiliation. Also near the beginning of Act I, a Helmsman initially obstructs Brangäne’s attempt to request Tristan’s meeting with Isolde.  On his second year of Scottish Opera’s Emerging Artist programme. English bass-baritone Edward Jowle (PC Budd in ‘Albert Herring’, Usher in ‘Trial by Jury, premiere of Press Secretary Hugo Cheeseman in ‘A Matter of Misconduct’, Schaunard in ‘La bohème’, Don Iñigo Gomez in ‘L’heure espagnole’ and Luka in ‘The Bear’) filled the brief moment.

I have lauded what I see as a production rooted in faithful adherence to “Wagners Wunsch”, but the biggest delight for me was seeing the orchestra on stage, remembering that Wagner’s ideal was to hide them underground.  Eschewing the distraction of scenery delivered the twin benefits of the music being “centre stage” where it belongs, not just metaphorically, whilst guarding against any encroachment of Regietheater nonsense.  Costumes, lighting and direction empowered the principals to deliver their best work, and that’s exactly what they did.  The playing from the Orchestra of Scottish Opera was, as always, phenomenal.  With two 25-minute intervals, none of the three acts seemed long (a first-time experience for me).  The Usher Hall performance is scheduled to commence late afternoon on 11th.  Highly recommended.

photo credit: Christopher Bowen