In Wagner’s opera “Tristan and Isolde” the protagonists are not so much characters as concepts. They speak in symbols. They represent philosophies of love and death. It’s a tough call for any director and designer. After all, what does a concept wear? Where does she do her shopping?Daniel Kramer and sculptor Anish Kapoor (who has only designed three operas to date) heed the call to symbolism, but serve up hits and misses in their curious new staging at English National Opera.The first scenes take place in a wooden pyramid split into three compartments, with terrible sight-lines for the audience. Isolde (Heidi Melton) resembles Madame de Pompadour, and it neatly suggests someone trapped by formal codes of behaviour. For some much less neat reason Tristan (Stuart Skelton) resembles a mythical Japanese warrior.The Act 2 love duet takes place in a cave within a giant suspended hemisphere. When mysterious soft splashes of light play around the lovers, it looks utterly magical. When the two well-built singers attempt to climb amongst the cramped stagmites, they look like turtles struggling to get out of a fishbowl. Did Kapoor forget that real, live human beings had to exist within his abstract sculptures?Tristan’s anguished death takes place in front of a huge screen with a large bleeding gash. Isolde, previously a brunette, has become albino. Their servants Brangäne and Kurwenal now look like the sort of evil clowns – blood-smeared, with scary-face make-up - you find in straight-to-video horror flicks. Symbolism has turned surreal; it’s a Beckettian universe.Some ideas work, some don’t, but it all feels rather scatter-gun and the wondrous coherence of the score is nowhere to be seen on stage. There’s not quite enough of it in the pit either, and under conductor Edward Gardner the musical climaxes don’t build and break with the inevitability which they should.Skelton and Melton both have impressive, powerful voices, but they both show signs of strain towards the end of their roles. Vocal honours go to Matthew Rose, luscious of timbre and tireless of tone, as Isolde’s husband. Karen Cargill and Craig Colclough are wonderfully energetic as the oddly-dressed servants.Kramer and Kapoor make a brave attempt at his most intractible of masterpieces. Ultimately – as so often happens – it eludes their grasp.“Tristan and Isolde” is at English National Opera
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