Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.It has been fascinating to see Tristan und Isolde at Glyndebourne only four days after the same opera at Bayreuth. Here are two summer opera festivals, both founded by audacious personalities (Bayreuth by Wagner himself) and yet the experience can be so different.Bayreuth’s Festspielhaus starts with one special advantage. Wagner envisioned a unique arrangement for his theatre in which the orchestra would not be visible to the audience. The hood covering the pit results in a wonderfully mellow sound unequalled elsewhere.The acoustics at Glyndebourne are good, too, but not in a way specific to grand, romantic, Wagnerian music drama. The sound is brighter, sharper and, in an auditorium two-thirds of the size, more immediate. There is less place for any substandard orchestral playing to hide.At this fourth revival of Glyndebourne’s 2003 production, that was not a problem with the superb London Philharmonic Orchestra in the pit. Following a semi-staged run during the pandemic, Robin Ticciati, Glyndebourne’s music director, was back in charge and his conducting seems to have had 500 volts put through it since then.The opera’s Prelude, a microcosm of the love story to come, is always a good indicator. At Bayreuth, Semyon Bychkov gave it a mythic, time-stands-still quality, but Ticciati was ramping up the speed and intensity within the first few minutes. His lovers clearly could not wait to get their hands on each other. It is not a surprise to find timings on the swift side as the music’s heartbeat started to race every time the emotions became heated (though a cut in the love duet helped). Heard in a theatre of Glyndebourne’s size, the result was intoxicating — an almost overwhelming vortex of passion.That fitted the swirling tunnel of the senses offered by the set design. This simple, symbolic staging looks like the minimalist productions at Bayreuth in the 1960s, but Nikolaus Lehnhoff, this production’s original director, offers little more than opera by numbers as singers suddenly head off to the back of the stage or pose at the front for no apparent reason.Like Bayreuth, Glyndebourne fielded a fine tenor as Tristan. Stuart Skelton has stamina, strength, a warmly sympathetic voice and musicality, if not quite the spontaneity of his Bayreuth counterpart. His Isolde, Miina-Liisa Värelä, lacks a similarly romantic sound, but gained in vocal quality through the performance. They are as static as the Bayreuth duo, though that seems more of a production angle here.Karen Cargill and the fine Shenyang are back in the cast as Brangäne and Kurwenal, the former singing from a stage box with crutches at this performance. The new King Marke is Franz-Josef Selig, who held the audience rapt with the subtle depths of understanding he brought to his monologue.Above all, this last opera of Glyndebourne’s season confirmed how Ticciati has come of age during his decade as music director. After his blazing championing of Ethel Smyth’s long-unperformed The Wreckers a few years ago and his sparkling Carmen at the start of this summer, impressive Wagner can now be added to the tally.★★★★☆To August 25, glyndebourne.com
