Compelling music drama: Wagner's Tristan und Isolde returns to Longborough Festival Opera with Peter Wedd & Catharine Woodward, conductor Anthony Negus

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde - Peter Wedd - Longborough Festival Opera (Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis)

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde; Peter Wedd, Catharine Woodward, Catherine Carby, Robert Hayward, Alistair Miles, director: Carmen Jakobi/Guido Martin-Brandis, conductor: Anthony Negus; Longborough Festival Opera
Reviewed 12 July 2026

An Isolde who prized tonal beauty, a vividly intense and heroic Tristan welded into a compelling performance where detailed personen regie was allied to strong musical values and an admirable lack of irritating concepts

Wagner's Tristan und Isolde was premiered in Munich in 1865 with Ludwig and Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld in the title roles. Their being husband and wife solving one of the work's problems - that the story and Wagner's treatment of it was considered somehow improper! But this was Wagner's first attempt at staging the work, even the well-funded Hofoper in Vienna had failed. Despite over 70 rehearsals between 1862 and 1864, Vienna entirely failed to stage the opera.

The confounding thing about Tristan und Isolde was not so much its length: works by Halévy and Meyerbeer at the Paris Opera lasted as long. But even Meyerbeer's Le prophète (the success of which Wagner both despised and envied), with its taxing tenor lead role, had long stretches when the tenor did not sing, the focus turning to other characters or large scale ensembles.

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde - Ludwig & Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld - Hofoper, Munich 1865

Tristan und Isolde has none of these, Wagner's focus is largely on the two protagonists and the early attempts to stage it fell because singers struggled to learn the roles and the number of requisite voices able to sing them was probably small. Tristan requires a very different type of stamina to the Meyerbeer's large tenor roles, though later in the 19th century a tenor like Jean de Reske would sing both Meyerbeer and Wagner in the same season [see my 2015 review of Karen Henson's book Opera Acts: Singers and Performance in the Late Nineteeth Century].

Longborough Festival Opera's production of Tristan und Isolde (its first ever) debuted in 2015, the product of the husband and wife team of director Carmen Jakobi and conductor Anthony Negus. Revived in 2017, it returned this year (seen 12 July 2026) with Guido Martin-Brandis as associate director. Peter Wedd returned to Tristan (a role he sang here in 2015 and 2017) and Catharine Woodward made her role debut as Isolde. Catherine Carby was Brangäne, Robert Hayward was Kurwenal, Alistair Miles was King Mark, Brian Smith Walters was Melot, Peter Bronder was the shepherd. Designs were by Kimie Nakano. Lucy Cullingford was movement director and intimacy coordinator.

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde - Peter Wedd, Catharine Woodward - Longborough Festival Opera (Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis)

There have evidently been changes to the production since 2015 and what we saw this year combined simple yet effective abstract stage pictures with strong and detailed personenregie. The produced was admirably free of concepts. An intimacy coordinator was credited, so even before the first notes of the prelude we knew this was not one of those productions where Tristan and Isolde never actually touch. In fact, I felt that the maker's of Catharine Woodward's non-smudge lipstick deserved their own credit. Costumes were atmospheric and non-specific, though there was something evocative of The Last Samurai about Peter Wedd's outfit.

The Barber in Benidorm: Louise Bakker's 1970s sitcom take on Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia with a terrific cast at Longborough Festival Opera

Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia - finale of Act One - Longborough Festival Opera, 2025 (Photo: Clive Barda)

Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia: Joseph Doody, Lauren Young, Benjamin Bevan, Henry Neill, director: Louise Bakker, conductor Elaine Kelly; Longborough Festival Opera
Reviewed 13 July 2025

It might be described as 'the British Bayreuth' but Longborough's stylishly engaging 1970s take on Rossini's comic masterpiece radiated both musical style and sheer enjoyment

This year's Longborough Festival Opera season does not feature any of the works by Wagner for which it has become known, though in Avner Dorman's Wahnfried: The Birth of the Wagner Cult and Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande, Wagner and his ideas were never far away. In completed contrast, the third opera being presented was far lighter, Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia.

We were lucky enough to catch the final performance, on Sunday 13 July 2025. Directed by Louise Bakker, designed by Max Johns and Anisha Fields, and conducted by Elaine Kelly, the production featured Henry Neill as Figaro, Joseph Doody as Count Almaviva, Lauren Young as Rosina, Benjamin Bevan as Dr Bartolo, Shafali Jalota as Berta, Trevor Eliot Bowes as Don Basilio, and Kieran Rayner as Fiorello. The staff for the production also featured a couple of other notable names; the tenor Alessandro Fisher was assistant director and language coach, whilst David Eaton (music director of Charles Court Opera) was assistant conductor, chorus master and responsible for the continuo.

Max Johns' imaginative set provided all the wherewithal for the opera's farcical elements and did service both for the indoor and outdoor scenes. During the overture, we opened on a Spanish square in a tourist destination in the 1970s, judging from the costumes. Itinerant vendors were setting up their wares, and Henry Neill's Figaro was established as being something of a wide boy and completely itinerant, without any fixed workplace. Feeling the need to fill the whole overture, Bakker rather allowed this joke to play for too long, but it provided valuable background for the comedy to come.

Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia - Storm scene: Lauren Young & chorus - Longborough Festival Opera, 2025 (Photo: Clive Barda)

The slightly over-done mannerism and over-active action partook of the visual language of sitcom and there was a feeling that Bakker and Johns had reset the opera in Benidorm. Whilst Bakker certainly endeavoured to fill the stage with colour and movement, with a fondness for over emphasis, there was little of the extreme stylisation that directors sometimes resort to when faced with Rossini's large-scale structures. The recitative rattled along nicely, with the cast managing to find a vocal and visual language that gelled. The opera was sung in Italian, nice and clear from my fourth row seats, with Nick Fowler's surtitles giving us a rather casual, demotic take on Sterbini's original.