The Agony and the Ecstasy: Matthew Rye enjoys a perceptive interpretation of ‘Tristan und Isolde'

Review of Tristan und Isolde, directed Christopher Alden, conducted Brown, Karlsruhe, 2016.

July 2016, Volume 10, Number 2, 47–51.

With this Tristan added to its recent Parsifal (reviewed in TWJ, November 2015), and with its multi-director Ring cycle launching this summer and due for completion in October 2017, the southwest German city of Karlsruhe seems set to become something of a Badischer Bayreuth. As the brochure calling for donations towards its new Ring claims, ‘Karlsruhe ist eine Wagner-Stadt’. It certainly has some of the necessary credentials: Wagner himself visited seven times, Hermann Levi and Felix Mottl conducted early performances of his works there, Joseph Keilberth cut his professional teeth at what was his home-town theatre, and in more recent times the company has helped launch the Wagnerian careers of Deborah Polaski, Lance Ryan and Stuart Skelton. Now, too, it is attracting some of the bigger names in operatic production, and this Tristan was put in the capable hands of Christopher Alden, a director known for his ability to draw out unexplored facets of an opera’s essence.