Imprisoned by Love: Matthew Rye finds plenty of food for thought in a darkly unromantic view of Wagner’s ‘monument to love’

Review of Tristan und Isolde, directed Katharina Wagner, conducted Thielemann, Bayreuth, 2015 (Deutsche Grammophon, 2 DVDs).

November 2016, Volume 10, Number 3, 78–80.

Viewing this DVD less than a fortnight after seeing the very same production live in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, with only a couple of casting variations (a performance reviewed elsewhere in this issue by Barry Millington), makes comparison unavoidable. There have been a few minor changes a year on, but they are largely cosmetic and have not altered the general perspective of Katharina Wagner’s darkly unromantic view of the work. My live experience was hampered by not having an unimpeded view of the stage (Wagner may have got a lot of things right in his revolutionary theatre design, but accounting for tall patrons in the row in front, without all seating being staggered, was not one of them), but the close-ups and video angles here reveal details missed or unacknowledged in the theatre.