Palais Theatre, Melbourne
February 5, 2018

After stepping up to the Regent’s big stage for Lohengrin and Tannhäuser over the past couple of years, Melbourne Opera continues its ambitious Wagnerian program at another of the city’s monumental old theatres, the Palais. The original opening night was cancelled due to the Isolde’s illness, curtailing an already brief season, so there was an even greater weight of expectation for the company’s major offering for 2018. While it underwhelmed theatrically, musically it confirmed Melbourne Opera’s rise, most notably thanks to the superb voice of local soprano Lee Abrahmsen – who surely has a very bright future.

Lee Abrahmsen and Neal Cooper. Photo: supplied 

Tristan und Isolde premiered in Munich in 1865, a decade after Wagner began composing this opera of sex and death that became a harbinger of 20th century music (most notably in the so-called Tristan chord). Inspired by a medieval epic and overlaid with the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Wagner’s own impossible passion for a wealthy patron’s wife, it begins on a ship sailing between Ireland and England.

Irish princess Isolde is being taken to Cornwall to wed King Marke by Tristan, the monarch’s...