Tristan and Isolde in Dalston

                 Tristan and Isolde

Everyone agrees that Wagner’s  opera Tristan and Isolde is very intense, whether sublimely or gruesomely so. Having had the fortune (good or bad) of seeing productions in consecutive years, I can add that the level of intensity experienced depends to a great degree on the venue and surrounding circumstances .

Take Glyndebourne: a comfortable, well-designed opera house set in beautiful grounds. The Tristan production of 2024 started in the afternoon and wound its slow way to a late hour. The vast length of the opera was undiminsihed, but no act was longer than the main picnic interval, which for many of the well-heeled audience is the whole point of Glyndebourne, as above all a social occasion.

The effect is that for much of the audience the spell, or the intensity,of the opera is broken by the intervals (there’s another one, not quite as long, but sufficient for desert and more drink). Doubtless there are those whose interval time is filled with emotions generated by the previous Act, but doubtless those noble or tormented souls are outnumbered by the sybarites of Glyndebourne .

Move forward to a very hot night in Hackney in August 2025. The Arcola theatre in Dalston puts on an annual “Grimeborn” festival of opera - yes, the name is a satirical tribute to the stately original. Numerous small, fringe opera companies present pared-down versions of the classical repertoire or new work.

These productions take place in a small floor space surrounded by on three sides by the audience. (Those in the very front row have to be careful with their legs, as action and especially exits and entrances come perilously near.) There is a fixed platform above, doing duty in any scene that requires height: an upper floor, a balcony, a ship’s quarter deck.

Under the platform lurk the musicians, to a maximum number of probably eight.

Props are at the level of a primary school play. However the musicians and the mainly young singers are excellent.

Grimeborn’s Tristan was ambitious, scarcely reducing the normal length (it was about four hours). It was sung in German; the score had been transcribed for a chamber ensemble. Love and death rode convincingly on the music. 

Here’s the big difference between Tristan at Glyndebourne and Tristan at Grimeborn. It’s not the the small number of singers and musicians. It was the unbearable heat.

The Arcola’s performance space is mainly below ground level. It has two doors: one into the theatre’s interior, the other directly on to the street. The doors close for the performance and there is no or inadequate air conditioning or other ventilation.

On a very hot evening , during a very long production, the audience sweltered without let up, apart form two 15 minute intervals. Fans and programmes fluttered vigorously .

I found that the only way of countering the relentless heat was to concentrate very hard on the opera, hard to the point of almost losing bodily awareness. Thus the intensity of my experience was heightened, beyond that felt at the greatly more relaxed Glyndebourne. At a fraction of the comfort, and a fraction of the price.

Forced to concentrate, and not to regard each Act as a lengthy period between enjoyable picnics, I found myself increasingly alienated. Not by the music, which was sublime and well played, but by the themes of ecstasy and annihilation - indeed ecstatic annihilation, all chased along  by the “unresolved” mystery of the famous Tristan Chord.

Later, I found the is quote from Clara Schumann: Tristan was “the most repugnant thing I have ever seen or heard in all my life”. 

This surely overstates the matter by many degrees; but I think I know where she was coming from.

August 2025