Tristan und Isolde, Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Call it the triumph of the anti-heroes. As Tristan exits the stage at the end of Act Three, he has become a disillusioned, grumpy old fool whose dabbling in drugs has only provided momentary marital bliss. He rants about the past while Kurwenal keeps himself to himself, then vanishes into darkness. Isolde, ageing and frail, tends to a coffin before singing a listless “Liebestod”. Marke and Brangäne are left distraught; the slaughter of Melot goes unnoticed.

In a city of Wagnerian devotion, the stakes for any new production of Tristan und Isolde are mercilessly high. This opening night of Graham Vick’s staging was no exception, with competing factions of booers and cheerers turning out in droves.

Even if not devoid of enticements, Vick’s rendering is ultimately a mixed bag. By relocating this most philosophical of music dramas to the domestic sphere, the British director risks robbing it of its aesthetic sweep. Played out among Paul Brown’s trivially contemporary sets and costumes, this Tristan is a dull family affair of fatally blasé people. Little remains of the idealistic sublimity of this über-romantic piece, in spite of the generally appropriate inclusion of actors representing Man and Woman at various stages of life. Curtailed to fit the parameters of daily existence, Tristan hardly avoids the pitfall of banality.

As the legendary lovers, Peter Seiffert and Petra-Maria Schnitzer both test the limits of their vocal and dramatic range, the latter in a belated role debut. Jane Irwin is a sweet-voiced if slightly underpowered Brangäne, veteran Eike Wilm Schulte is a distinguished Kurwenal and Kristin Sigmundsson lends his sonorous bass and towering presence to Marke’s grief-stricken monologue.

Musical values are safe in the hands of general music director Donald Runnicles, who elicits richly textured sounds from the pit, his ample tempi inducing suitable restlessness, incandescent fervour and tragic resignation. All of which is an awkward match for the eerily poetical sight of an Isolde doppelgänger folding her laundry.

Deutsche Oper