Clive James once said that watching a great actor with a bad script was like watching a Bugatti lubricated with hair oil. It’s a simile that constantly springs to mind when watching the massed talents onstage tonight struggle through a production as leaden and lifeless as this.
The jazz pianist and composer Julian Joseph presented some of these ideas as an interesting work in progress at the Royal Opera House five years ago, but since then it appears that all the musical references to Wagner (including improvisations based on the iconic “Tristan chord”) have been removed, leaving us with just the original Celtic legend on which Wagner’s opera was based. The main problem, though, is the libretto of Mike Phillips. The already complicated love story of murder and vengeance, of poisons and love potions, is further confused by setting the story in contemporary London and Bucharest and making the characters African migrants and Romanian gangsters.
The backstory, elucidated in the programme notes, is exhausting enough (“Isolde’s father is a rich African businessman who received a peerage under Tony Blair’s New Labour”), but the onstage sung parts are even more over-explainy and tediously literal. Carleen Anderson, a terrific soul singer with a remarkable three-octave range, has a thankless job trying to bring Isolde to life with a series of verbose lyrics, sung at the top of her register. Ken Papenfus (as Tristan) and Christine Tobin (as Iuliana and Brigid) try their best, but, frankly, it might have been better had they been singing in a language nobody understood. Instead of reinvigorating the story as, say, West Side Story does with Romeo and Juliet, Phillips’ libretto suffocates the plot – all telling and no showing.
The pity is that, among some rather bland arrangements, there are some genuinely good moments. Some of Joseph’s arias recall the symphonic soul of the Rotary Connection’s I Am the Black Gold of the Sun – assisted by the 16-piece choral harmonies of the BBC Singers – and there are some decent solos from Joseph and the horn players he’s embedded in the BBC Concert Orchestra.
But, as an oratorio, it falls flat. There is no passion, no chemistry, and no moments of reflection that bring the narrative arc to life.
