Leading Australian Heldentenor discusses the long and winding road that lead up to his very first Tristan.

I first saw Tristan and Isolde live in San Francisco with Donald Runnicles conducting and Elizabeth Connell singing Isolde. I remember the Tristan – he was loud and not particularly pretty… but I remember being completely transfixed by the work, musically.

I’d heard some Wagner by that stage in my career. I’d been involved with Die Meistersinger when I was in Sydney – the second iteration of the Michael Hampe production back in 1993 – but you can’t really listen to Meistersinger and understand where Tristan is going to come from.

Back then I was relatively young and stupid, so I don’t recall whether I got it in the way that I get it now. But I got it to the point where I knew that, at that moment, the world had changed for me.

Tristan was never something that I thought I would sing, not for a long time. It was so rarefied that I didn’t want to touch it for fear of spoiling it, if that makes sense. Sometimes there are things that are so beautiful and on such a different level from...