Grange Park Opera matches Wagner’s vision with Tristan und Isolde — review

As the number of summer opera festivals in the UK has blossomed, so each is doing its best to cultivate a distinct personality. With its 700-seat theatre, the largest outside Glyndebourne, Grange Park Opera in Surrey is ambitious about the scale of work it presents.

There are three operas on this season’s programme: Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, Massenet’s Werther and a revival of Puccini’s Tosca, the production that opened Grange Park Opera’s splendid, miniature La Scala in 2017. All come from the peak of the romantic era and nobody would doubt that the company is up for the challenge.

Without breaking new ground, the opening production of Tristan und Isolde looks handsome and projects a potent sense of atmosphere. The scale of Wagner’s conception — its eternal, Platonic ideals of love and suffering — never feels short-changed.

The main setting, a richly upholstered Victorian living room, with a passing resemblance to Wagner’s own Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth, his writing desk covered in pages of the score, affords multiple possibilities. Its walls are painted with a ship, a forest and a castle, potential sets for the three acts, though everything remains suggestive.

As both director and designer, Charles Edwards has devised a production in which the visual element plays a big role — symbolic daylight streaming through the doors, decay and detritus littering the final act, a radiant vision of Isolde near the end. Elsewhere, some odd things happen. Why do people wander in and out during the love duet if Brangäne is on watch? Why does Tristan exit early through one door, presumably to death, while Isolde goes out at the back of the stage, transfigured in a heavenly cloud of light? The stage crew were so energetic with the dry ice that the curtain calls disappeared into a thick fog.

It is Isolde’s character that comes across most vividly. Rachel Nicholls plays her as a tempestuous Irish princess, all injured fury, not at all the passive victim of fate, though more vocal beauty from her would be welcome. Gwyn Hughes Jones, who withdrew from the role of Tristan earlier in the year in Paris, appeared here at the more helpfully sized Grange Park, singing with stamina and a clear, true musicianship that compensated for some lack of power.

Singing Wagner in a theatre of this size is a very different experience. Even so, the other roles were cast from strength. Christine Rice was a glowingly sung Brangäne, David Stout an impressively strong Kurwenal, and Matthew Rose a deeply considered, resonant King Marke. The off-stage chorus, singing from the balcony, sounded noisily lusty. 

For once in this opera the singers were not drowned by the orchestra. Grange Park’s excellent acoustics must help, but the conductor, Stephen Barlow, was always considerate and drew a convincing Wagnerian sound from the Gascoigne Orchestra. Though the pace dragged in the early stages, the emotions gained in heat and the electricity started to crackle by the end. A performance of Tristan und Isolde away from the main highways of the opera world should not be as good as this.

★★★★☆

To July 9, grangeparkopera.co.uk