Up in the Gods: John Warner enjoys an impressive but distantly recorded middle act of ‘Tristan’ from Barbirolli

Review of Tristan und Isolde, Act II, conducted Barbirolli, London, 1954 (Barbirolli Society, 1 CD).

November 2020, Volume 14, Number 3, 69–71.

John Barbirolli owed his conducting ‘breakthrough’ to opera. Early successes with the British National Opera Company and Covent Garden’s touring troupe soon led to invitations from the Hallé and New York Philharmonic, the two orchestras with which he would spend the rest of his career. Once out of the pit and into the concert hall, he only ever conducted in opera houses as a guest, despite being offered the top job by Covent Garden.

His extensive discography is thus dominated by concert repertory, not opera. This is a shame because the evidence seems to point towards Barbirolli as a force to be reckoned with in a whole range of operas from Mozart to Mascagni to Richard Strauss, and indeed Wagner.