Type – Wagner Opera, independent opera company, romance
If you liked – Watershed: The Death of Dr Duncan, La Boheme
BK Opera’s Tristan und Isolde finds its tension in two brilliant voices, but the staging lets it slip away.
Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde is an opera about desire that refuses to resolve. Its opening chord (known as the Tristan Chord) is tense and unstable and leaves you on the edge of your seat, waiting for a tonal resolution. Embodying the central theme of the tragedy, Wagner’s score withholds the discordant release until the final moments of the work. Forbidden love, unfilled love and longing are portrayed through the dissonance where the pacing and the stage action all serve that delay.
Compressing the full orchestration into a two-piano accompaniment and bringing the approximately 5-hour production down to 3 (plus an interval) is a bold wager; stripping away the orchestra forces the creatives to find another way to generate the tension. While vocally triumphant, BK Opera’s intimate production of Tristan and Isolde only partly achieves this.
Much of Wagner’s score freezes into monologues and serenades, and stillness is the point of those moments – however this staging fails to give it a purpose. A static scene can be charged with restraint, or with the threat of what the characters cannot say. Here, too often, it feels like the singers are simply waiting for their next musical cue, with the scenes involving movement faring a little better. The intimacy and the fight scenes are awkwardly mechanical and choreographed rather than felt despite Kate Millet’s direction placing the audience inside the psychological world of the opera rather than at a distance from its spectacle. Oliver Hall’s costume design sees the sombre looking overcoats of Act I replaced with bright, flowery crepe-paper outfits in Act II which were harder to read still. I struggled to make sense of what the costumes were trying to say about these characters, and their rustling was more distraction than design.
The two-piano setup is a deliberate choice, and I understand why an independent Australian opera company would make it. But it remains my main sticking point. The Tristan chord depends on sustained, swelling strings and a harmony that aches because it will not settle. A piano strikes and decays. The same limitation weakens the Liebestod (German for ‘love death’ and is the climactic, final aria), where the orchestra should carry the soprano toward the long-delayed resolution. In a Wagner opera where the action stage is minimal, the orchestra is the drama – and the pianos, although skilfully played by Konrad Olszewski and Shauna Beesly under Kelly Lovelady, could only outline it.
Against that, the two leads are the production’s best argument for itself. Australian Wagnerian soprano Lee Abrahmsen‘s rich and warm tone enriches her powerful vocal performance. Tristan is among the most punishing tenor roles in the repertoire, and James Egglestone delivers a sharp, measured performance. Their commitment to the text and to each other is a highlight, a conviction the staging around them does not always match. There are passages of real beauty in Act II, as the actors find an ally in darkness, and where the singers, the music and the stillness is finally pulled in the same direction. It was not sustained across the evening, but it showed what the production was reaching for.
Is Tristan und Isolde worth seeing in Melbourne?
Marking the company’s 10th anniversary, BK Opera’s bare bones production of Tristan und Isolde continues the companies’ signature style of bringing dark and psychologically intense opera to the Australian stage.
Wagner builds Tristan on a chord that promises resolution and withholds it for hours. Here that tension lives in the two voices alone, and for stretches they hold it. A vocal triumph ensues, but too often the piano arrangement and the staging let it slip away.
Tickets and Practical Info for Tristan und Isolde in Sydney 🎟️
Playing at Northcote Town Hall Arts Centre from 29 – 31 OCT 2026
SUNG IN GERMAN WITH ENGLISH SURTITLES
Age Suitability: 15 and over
Content Warnings: Adult themes, Smoke and Haze, Dynamic soundtrack or loud noises
Duration: Approximately 3 hours, with interval
https://www.bkopera.com.au/tristan-und-isolde
CAST
TRISTAN James Egglestone
ISOLDE Lee Abrahmsen
KING MARKE Warwick Fyfe*
BRANGÄNE Belinda Dalton / Piri Jakab (cover)
KURWENAL Henry Shaw
MELOT Daniel Sziesong Todd
STEERSMAN James Penn
ENSEMBLE
Andrew Barrow, Archie Rumsam, Benjamin Moore, Beth Paterson, Beth Potter, Bradley Storer, Caitlin Rowe, Danielle Vita, Douglas McQueen-Thomson, Imala Konyn, Joelle Kross, Johanna Tan, Kaitlin Brown,
CREATIVES
COMPOSER & LIBRETTIST Richard Wagner
DIRECTION Kate Millett
CONDUCTOR Kelly Lovelady
PIANISTS Konrad Olszewski & Shauna Beesley
SET Ishan Vivekanantham
LIGHTING & VIDEO Gabriel Bethune
COSTUME Oliver Hall
SOUND Jack Burmeister
STAGE MANAGER Jazmine Golding
PRODUCTION MANAGER Ella Campbell
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR Kat Yates
INTIMACY COORDINATOR Cohan
FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHER Ricardo Magno
