Perhaps the latest revival of Glyndebourne's production should be renamed Isolde und Tristan, for Anja Kampe's Isolde so outshines Torsten Kerl's stolid, unengaging Tristan that the dramatic balance of the work is decisively tilted. Kampe's singing has wonderful musicality that invests every phrase with character and real weight of meaning, no easy task in such a long and demanding role.
In Wagnerian terms, hers is not a big voice, and for that reason the final Liebestod was much less all-engulfing than it can be in some performances. But if it's hard to imagine Kampe's soprano being heard over an orchestra on full throttle, here with Vladimir Jurowski keeping the London Philharmonic carefully in check, it worked beautifully, if with some loss of physical impact.
Nikolaus Lehnhoff's cerebral staging (revived by Daniel Dooner) has a timeless seriousness about it. More than any other Lehnhoff production I've seen, it reveals his debt to Wieland Wagner, with whom he worked at the beginning of his career. Such a disciplined, abstract approach – Tristan and Isolde sing their love duet at least five metres apart – demands that the music sustain the dramatic thread. The occasional excursions into naturalism – Melot (Trevor Scheunemann) as a Monty Pythonesque knight in armour; the sheep-headed shepherd (Andrew Kennedy) appearing like a survivor from some druidic ritual; the lovers sliding towards each other down the curve of Ronald Aeschlimann's set as the potion takes effect – provide unintended moments of light relief, but sometimes jar with the measured, often slow-motion unfolding of the action.
With Sarah Connolly as a wonderfully eloquent Brangäne, Andrzej Dobber as an unstinting Kurwenal, and Georg Zeppenfeld playing King Mark with grave, fathomless beauty of tone, most of the performances have the musical presence this dramatic setting demands. But Kerl's nasal tone and lumbering stage manner are persistent weaknesses, for which even Kampe's luminous presence cannot quite compensate.
On the first night, Jurowski's conducting increased in authority after a rather ponderous opening. His accompaniment to Tristan's third-act monologue, which seemed as if it would never end, was a model of imagination, tact and wonderfully refined orchestral playing, though for once one wished the customary cut in that music had been observed.
