Countdown to Ecstasy

In Tristan und Isolde, Wagner set out to elevate romantic passion to the level of myth; Dmitri Tcherniakov’s new production, which opened recently at the Staatsoper Berlin, seemed determined to bring the myth back down to the level of the mundane. Perhaps this shouldn’t come as a total surprise. Mr Tcherniakov used a not-dissimilar approach in his 2015 production of Parsifal (also at the Staatsoper), removing the opera’s mystery-play veneer to reveal the misogyny and hypocrisy at the heart of the grail kingdom. While that production was a great (if somewhat controversial) success, his attempts to deflate the myth of Tristan and Isolde succeeded mostly in exposing a black hole of quotidian dullness into which the opera’s many pleasures were systematically swallowed.

Despite the flatness of the staging, there was little that came across as…