Not a Pretty Sight: Barry Millington enjoys a psychologically probing if austere ‘Tristan’ at Covent Garden

Review of Tristan und Isolde, directed Loy, conducted Pappano, Royal Opera House, London, 2014.

March 2015, Volume 9, Number 1, 50–52.

Those for whom Tristan und Isolde is a more or less conventional Romantic love story, but with the erotic component intensified beyond one’s wildest dreams, may prefer a more conventional treatment than Christof Loy’s in his 2009 production for Covent Garden and Houston Grand Opera, now revived at the Royal Opera. But those willing to grapple with the extraordinary complexities of the work, the big emotional and philosophical issues swilling around beneath the surface, may well find this production, austere and visually spare as it is, one of the most rewarding of recent years.