28 OCTOBER 2000, Page 72

Opera

Tristan und Isolde (Royal Opera House)

Moments of merit

Michael Tanner

Iwonder how much difference there was between the first and second performances of Tristan und Isolde in the new production at the Royal Opera. I arrived back in Eng- land in time to read the most uniformly savage reviews of a major operatic event that I can remember, and the ones that have appeared since have contrived to be still more ferocious. The only exception has been the notice in the Observer, and its crit- ic, like me, attended the second night. Like me, too, she was overwhelmed by many aspects of the performance, and the fea- tures of it that found less favour with her nonetheless didn't undermine her warm response overall. Can there be that much difference between performances separat- ed by only three days?

When it is a matter of a first night, with a conductor who over and over again has demonstrated his allergy to such occasions, I think that the answer has to be yes. For it is the conductor who determines the Stim- mung of the whole of an operatic occasion, especially when Tristan is in question. As Wagner told Cosima, he let the whole sym- phonic side of his nature have its say in this work and, though no one would sanely dis- pute that the quality of the singers is important, so long as they are not actively sabotaging the performance, they can be quite mediocre and still not have a devas- tating effect on it.

Quite apart from the reviews, the prospects for an enjoyable, let alone an apocalyptic evening, seemed dim. I have not found Haitink to be, on the whole, a Wagnerian 'natural'. I found his Covent Garden Parsifal dismayingly superficial; his Ring only intermittently inspired; his Meis- tersinger not even that. Tristan I take to be the most demanding of all, when I think of the small proportion of performances that I have seen that have maintained the exalted level it requires. How often the prelude either rages in a way that virtually pre- cludes the drama itself from living up to such standards of intensity, or flags in a way that makes too discouraging a start to the evening for one to be in the mood for Isolde's stupendous opening diatribe, and everything that that leads to.

Haitink opted for a no-holds-barred approach, and with the orchestra on mag- nificent form I was grateful, fearing that there would be little else to respond to so ardently. In fact Act I was the least grip- ping, where usually, with an undistin- guished cast, such as we had here, it is the most. The drama is of a readily graspable kind, the situations are extremely strong, and the climaxes are placed so as virtually to guarantee a knock-out close to the act.

The reasons for the tepid level of this account were not far to seek: the produc- tion, with its already notorious red and blue boxes containing, and separating, the protagonists, almost ensured that the audi- ence would have to work harder than the performers to generate tension; partly because one might conscientiously spend some time and effort attempting to see what the point of the sets is, partly because it does so effectively rule out any of the dramatic climaxes which Wagner wonder- fully created. As well as all that, Haitink did take a leisurely view of the proceed- ings; and in particular at those key moments where the atmosphere changes, for instance, after the Sailor has sung for the second time, he let things slacken.

The distribution of forces in Act I, too, with Isolde holding not only all the dramatic trumps but also having the most impas- sioned music, was reinforced by having in Gabriele Schnaut an Isolde who is at her best — a very powerful best — in such pas- sages as her opening outburst, and the Curse, here delivered as well as I have ever heard it. Not only is the Tristan of Jon Fredric West diminutive, at any rate in height, but he has almost a stage absence: a friendly chap in a waistcoat and white shirt, he is so far from any picture of knightly val- our that one may have that Isolde's scorn seemed to have all too easy a target. He achieved his strongest but not his best effects by shouting, and in a way only remotely related to Wagner's notes. To some extent Schnaut suffered from the same vice, quite frequently singing off-pitch.

Yet Haitink kept the orchestra boiling slowly to just sufficient effect, so that where in many accounts the first act dwarfs the second, in his the second grew out of the first, and built on it. All the more infu- riating that he imposed that huge cut in the love duet, not less ruinous there than one of comparable size would be in, say, the centre of the first movement of Beethoven's Ninth. Yet once more he shaped what he did conduct with such warmth and colour — this was very much Haitink the Debussyan — and with such a sure sense of its shape, something that almost no one keeps a hold of, that this amounted to one of the most overwhelm- ing readings of the duet that I have experi- enced in the theatre.

I can see that with each sentence I write my claims about the powerful effect of the evening are becoming less convincing. And if I went on to Act III I would only make matters worse. Once more, Wagner, it seems to me, wrote a score which has a capacity to move, to shatter, which is oddly independent of any given performance, though this one, I insist, had many merits. Whatever else, by the second night it was no longer anything like the disaster that it has been widely described as. Please, any- one with doubts, go and see, especially go and listen.