· Two productions at Bayreuth's 2008 festival were repeated from previous years: Katharina Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, which had premiered in 2007, and Christoph Marthaler's Tristan und Isolde, last seen in 2006. Both proved disappointing, particularly in their staging, but also in their musical execution.

· Anna Viebrock's set for this year's Tristan und Isolde was a three-sided rectangular box, the walls of which moved up a little in Act 2 and again in Act 3 so that all three levels could be seen as bands on the walls in the third act. In the first act, this rectangular space, strewn with sofas and chairs, worked well enough, perhaps suggesting the lounge of a large ship. For the subsequent acts, however, where Wagner's text sets Act 2 in the garden adjacent to Isolde's chamber in Cornwall, and Act 3 in the neglected garden of Tristan's castle in Kareol, this space did not function as well. One can imagine a production where this could be made to work; Marthaler's direction, however, fell far short of this. The problem seemed to be that, confronted with an opera where there is not a great deal of physical action, Marthaler felt the need to occupy the audience's attention with bits of "business" which had little relevance to music or text. Many of these centred on Isolde who began a (pointless) "pointing" motif in the first act, despite being discouraged from doing this by Brangäne. The pointing motif was then pushed to irritating lengths in the second act: Isolde teased Brangäne. by continually pointing to the fluorescent ceiling lights. Here, this did have a kind of relevance linked with the heroine's wish to extinguish the torch as a signal for Tristan to approach. But the pointing continued, especially toward the end of the act as various lights began, for no apparent reason, to flicker, Isolde pointing to each in turn as they did so. Perhaps Marthaler could see that Robert Holl's delivery of Marke's long and moving reproach of the lovers was here less than riveting vocally and histrionically and needed some visual help. The pointing didn't help, however.

· Another action / production motif was that of overturning chairs, principally in the first act. Isolde began this as a physical expression to accompany her anger of her treatment by Tristan as revealed in her narration to Brangaene. But other characters soon got into the act and the action finally became repetitive and extraneous.

 

· Not surprisingly in a work where the night / day symbolism is so important, light / lights were another motif in this production. Thus in Act 3, the walls of the rectangular box were draped with discarded fluro tubes which flickered on and off disconcertingly during Tristan's pain-wracked passages as Kurwenal tries to calm him. To the suggestion that this symbolizes the fitfully ebbing life of the hero, I'd answer that this is a gross trivialization of the text and particularly of Wagner's sophisticated light / darkness discussion which permeates the lovers' ecstatic outpourings in Act 2 (see especially the passage which begins at Tristan's "Dem Tage! Dem Tage!") Yet another action motif involved caressing / facing the walls of the set. Isolde began this caressing of the walls in Act 2 (yes, during the love duet), and Kurwenal continued it in the third act, alternating this with crawling on the floor. Then, after the death of Tristan, most of the other ill-fated characters walked to the wall and faced it as a means of suggesting their death. We did not, of course, see Kurwenal "kill" Melot.

 

· All of these repeated strategies in action and visuals did little to illuminate the work; indeed they provided an irritating distraction. Furthermore, the stylized acting of much of the performance was distinctly at odds with the naturalistic acting of the Isolde, Irene Theorin. Perhaps the most depressing aspect of this production was its cold, unemotional nature. One of the greatest love stories ever committed to music? You'd never think that after seeing this production.

 

· So what of the music? There were problems here, also. None of these, however, arose from Robert Dean Smith's excellent Tristan which was beautifully performed. The Isolde, Irene Theorin, was clearly chosen for her acting ability since she performed the chair-tossing and finger-pointing actions with great gusto and looked beautiful throughout. Vocally, however, she was a disappointment: the "flutter" in the voice, now more developed than that heard in her Copenhagen Brünnhilde, became yet another irritating element and the piercing high notes unpleasant. Peter Schneider conducted a well-paced reading of the score, avoiding longueurs, and making no concessions to the singers who were often swamped by gorgeous waves of sound. I confess I delighted in this avalanche of sound since there was little enough of interest on stage; but many I spoke to were dismayed by the dominance of the orchestra.

 

· Delight in musical values was about all one could hope to take from Katharina Wagner's production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg . It was pointless to bring a "knowledge" of the work to this staging since there was scant attention paid to the text. Furthermore, understanding the German language only emphasized the incongruity between what was being sung on the one hand, and what was happening on stage on the other. For example, if one decides, as Ms Wagner does, to make Hans Sachs a painter rather than a cobbler, you have a difficulty with the plausibility of the dialogue between Eva and Sachs in the first scene of Act 3 when Eva claims that the shoe made for her by Sachs pinches and needs adjustment.

· Similar problems arise with making Walther a painter. But it would be tedious to enumerate the infelicities of this production. However, a brief treatment of the staging of the transition to the great final scene of Act 3 will give a taste of the production.

 

· During the transition music which follows the quintet, the statues of great arts figures of the past, which we have seen in the previous acts, enter the action with a vengeance: now sporting monstrous heads, they do a grim dance to the joyous section of the score known as the "Dance of the Apprentices" after having tied Hans Sachs to a chair. In come a group of dolly girls who do a strip and one bare-breasted girl sits on Sachs's lap. The huge-headed arts figures' response is to pull out fake "erections" from their trousers, while a few of them simulate masturbation. Despite this reaction to the dolly girls, the male figures actually seem to prefer each other and pair off to continue their dance. Then there is a piece of self-reflexive "evaluation": the production team apparently responsible for these figures and their actions take a bow; but their triumph is short-lived as they are bundled into a garbage bin and burned as rubbish. Presumably this is Katharina Wagner's attempt to forestall criticism of her production as rubbish. A released Hans Sachs retrieves a statue of a golden hind from the flames of the dustbin. The scrim behind this down-stage action remains down during all of these actions and stays there as the chorus (unseen) hail Sachs. The latter's famous address is given in semi darkness, only underlighting providing faint illumination of the character. Finally the scrim is lifted to reveal the chorus seated in a bank of seats as at a tennis match. Beckmesser sings his mangled version of Walter's song while he is shoveling dirt; but far from being a figure of derision, he is now a hero. The mangled song is now clearly an important avant-garde work, and he is sporting a T-shirt proclaiming "Beck in Town". Likewise, Walther has now swapped roles: no longer the avant-garde artist, he is dressed in conservative suit and tie, the darling artist of the smart set.

 

· My companions in the adjacent seats had had enough after the first two acts and did not return for the third act; on the other hand, one well-known Australian artist skipped the first two acts but came to the third "to join the booing". In that, he had many companions. But Ms Wagner, who bravely (brazenly?) took a curtain call, seemed unfazed by the vigorous chorus of boos which greeted her. But no one bundled her into a garbage can. And the musical side? Certainly the orchestra played beautifully under Sebastian Weigle. But of the singers, only one stood out: Klaus Florian Vogt as Walther. Furthermore, his stage presence was every bit as fine as his voice. Of the others, Franz Hawlata was particularly disappointing, his voice barely lasting the distance. Well, painters were never known for their vocal splendour; cobblers, now, they know how to spin a tune or two.