‘Tristan’ à la mode? Christopher Wintle ponders the achievements and intentions of Christof Loy in his new Covent Garden production

Hans Keller used to say – quite reasonably – that critics must judge achievements and not intentions. When a critic asks ‘what have the creators done?’, he addresses palpable achievement; when he asks ‘what is it the creators are trying to do?’, he probes mere intentions. Achievements transfigure lives; intentions that never go beyond intentions create self-consciousness, and self-consciousness is the enemy of art. Of course, all creators affirm their intentions from within the artwork in one way or another – reasoning is, after all, an Aristotelian requirement – either by standing apart from the action or by making adroit insertions into it.