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Nina Stemme is truly outstanding in the Royal Opera’s new Tristan und Isolde: she produces ample quantities of warm, expressive tone; she holds the stage with her personality, not with excessive histrionics; and she looks wonderful. Her standing ovation was thoroughly deserved.

Other than that great performance, the production is a mixed experience: significantly better for those sitting stage left, as fortunately I was. Cristof Loy places the inner drama downstage in what might be a psychiatrist’s interview room, or perhaps the staff table at a school cafeteria, given the juxtaposition of cheap metal-framed chairs with a candlelit and benaped dinner table for the Act 2 duet. An enormous metal wall lours over stage right, and the majority of the action takes place hard against it, invisible to nearly half the audience. If the loud booing of Loy on the first night (according to my canary-fancying friend who attended) was purely for this reason, it was well justified; if for the absence of conventional sets (who needs a ship?), less so.

Behind this antiseptic forestage is a purple velvet curtain, which periodically divides, shifts or is pulled back to reveal different stages of a drunken, all-male, black tie wedding feast. The chorus populating this scene were often required to freeze, or else to carouse boorishly. As the purple curtain divided during the prelude (to reveal the wedding feast laid out but with no guests yet present) it was unclear whether the stage crew had presented the correct opera at all: a cross between two Glyndebourne productions, Eugene Onegin and The Rake’s Progress, was suggested by the white-outlined ballroom. Yet the return of this scenario, numerous times in each act, confirmed beyond doubt that it was intentional: its import was less clear, since I hesitate to accuse a director of Loy’s sophistication of the sub-Chereau device of satirising capitalism by dressing people in dinner suits. The Perfect Wagnerite is over a hundred years old, after all.

Whether or not the conceit has anything to recommend it, many of the performances do – and, as seen in his recent Lulu at Covent Garden, Loy really knows how to direct singing actors. Tragically, the Tristan of Ben Heppner, once a really fine singer, cannot now be said to pass muster. He must know this – a dozen cracked notes in an evening don’t lie – and the gesture of Antonio Pappano in embracing him onstage seemed to reflect the sense of relief that Heppner had made it to the end of the evening with any voice left at all. In a recent interview Heppner was open – uncharacteristically so for a leading singer – about the vocal problems that he experienced in the early years of this decade, and it seemed for a while that he had conquered them. But, though he managed to produce some beautiful sounds, can he really last the run? Beyond that, it will be interesting to see how his planned series of Lohengrins in Berlin in January progresses.

On happier notes, Michael Volle’s vocal contribution was strong throughout, delineating Kurwenal as a darker individual than one usually sees. Sophie Koch’s Brangäne dwelt on remorse but mercifully did not appear one step from a Donizettian madhouse as too many do in that rôle. Ryland Davies was a cynical Shepherd; Richard Berkeley-Steele a forceful if ageing Melot (I wonder if he is understudying Tristan?). The originally advertised Marke was Matti Salminen, and for the first time ever I felt a little regret on hearing that Sir John Tomlinson would stand in (Salminen is returning from knee surgery next week, apparently). It’s the first time for many years that the great Finnish bass has been cast at Covent Garden, and I hope that this setback won’t delay his reappearance in future. Of course, Sir John is to be treasured whenever he is among us: his Grand Inquisitor only last week was terrifying, and he found a different tone altogether for Marke. This is surely one of the hardest rôles to act and sing, in Wagner or elsewhere, and certainly Tomlinson’s was the most moving performance I’ve seen and heard – mostly heard, since volume is at the centre of what Sir John does. How could one not sympathize when Tristan’s uncle is so very disappointed, and so very, very loud? But the drama was central to Tomlinson’s performance – a tour-de-force.

Finally, and most importantly: Nina Stemme’s Liebestod was one of the best things I’ve ever heard in an opera house.