Making Great Wagnerian Waves

Isolde in fully cry: Sarah Jakubiak with Antonio Pappano and the LSO Picture © Mark Allan

Antonio Pappano’s exploration of Tristan und Isolde has been a long time in the making. Before he was so much as a twinkle in the eye of the Royal Opera House’s board, he conducted Wagner’s hymn to love and death in 1994 in Brussels, with Ronald Hamilton and Anne Evans as his protagonists. Seven years earlier at Bayreuth, he had assisted Daniel Barenboim in the last run of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s legendary 1981 production with Peter Hofmann and Caterina Ligendza - the same principals I had seen on my first visit to the festival in 1986.

Fast forward to 2010: within the space of 12 months Pappano recorded Tristan und Isolde - his first and, to date, only commercially released audio recording of a complete Wagner opera - and conducted a new staging by Christof Loy at Covent Garden. Nina Stemme was common to both endeavours. She was partnered in the studio by Plácido Domingo, tackling a role he never sang on stage, and at Covent Garden by Ben Heppner, who retired in 2014 aged 58 after a succession of cancellations - such was the cumulative stress of being a leading exponent of Wagner’s heroic tenor roles.