Tristan und Isolde, Glyndebourne review - infinite love at white heat

Richard Strauss described conducting Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde for the first time as "the most wonderful day of my life". It’s understandable that Glyndebourne’s music director Robin Ticciati should wish to improve upon “wonderful” in conducting a concert staging in 2021 with "miraculous" in charge of the full Nikolaus Lehnhoff production. I challenge anyone to cite another Tristan more alert to every possibility – the electrifying, the ferocious, the transcendental.

Ticciati knew from 2021 that he could depend upon a rock-solid Isolde in Miina-Liisa Värelä. The Finnish dramatic soprano takes the full weight of the voice, even throughout the register, up to the top, which is not stand-out (or stand-alone) spectacular but very much part of the whole. There's no doubt from her Act 1 monologue of fury against treacherous Tristan that she will stay the course, but she has more in her armoury.

Stuart Skelton (pictured below in Act 3 with Shenyang as Kurwenal) has been the world Tristan of choice for a long time now – amazingly long, given the killer nature of the role. An alarming crack in the ecstasy of Act One's conclusion gave cause for concern, but while he may no go to the extremes of an Act 3 endgame in which a wounded man can't die until he sees his lover again - as he did in the far less consistent English National Opera production back in 2016 – he paces it so intelligently, and repays Ticciati's trust abundantly. The revelations truly unfold in Act Two, which, when I last saw it at Glyndebourne, the late, great Jonathan Harvey declared, reeling at the end of it, one of the greatest things in music. The more so when Värelä unfurls ever more glorious sound from the apostrophe to Frau Minne (the love goddess) onwards. Admittedly the long disquisition on night and day is cut, sparing Skelton further risk of burnout, but in the "love-night" proper, he unfurls effortlessly threaded soft singing to match Värelä's. The berceuse theme which is first heard at "Lausch, Geliebter "("listen, beloved") goes even further in tenderness from Ticciati's strings; the build of the idea which will be further transfigured in the so-called "Liebestod" is perfectly manoeuvred, the fusion of voices and orchestra supernaturaly fine.

An audience may take this for granted, but total togetherness in Wagner isn't easily achieved. Lehnhoff's production, revived, as were the moves for the concert staging, by Daniel Dooner, helps by keeping the singers motionless for long stretches and delivering out front, where they can see Ticciati's high and clear direction. Designer Roland Aeschlimann's curved ramps and big steps don't make movement easy, and Skelton is now having trouble negotiating them. Stillness is all, though: how Värelä keeps her beautifully bone-structured face in upwardly-turned freeze-frame as Marke reproaches Tristan is another miracle, and the compositions of the bodies within the frame are especially impressive here. Franz-Josef Selig captures every facet of the stricken king with ideal focus, helping to sustain the intensity to the end of the act.

Robin Carter's lighting does even more of the work than the late director: the deep blue of night and love is the only possibility I can think of for much of Act 2, and the dawn spreading over it before the harsh light of day brings an act of apprent betrayal to light is magical. Similarly in Act 3, a grey-blue version of a harsh sunlit sky yields to the force of lovers' will again.

Shenyang as faithful Kurwenal is moving in his reactions to the stricken Tristan's near-death musings here. Last night we had what turned out to be the revelation of a cover debut in the role of Isolde's handmaiden Brangane. On the first, the magnificent Karen Cargill had sung the part from the side, but last night Marlene Lichtenberg (pictured right) took full command. Her warmth contrasted perfectly with the steely resolve of Isolde in Act One, and everything was perfectly in place - once again, co-ordination with Ticciati never faltered. Caspar Singh and the Glyndebourne Chorus's John Mackenzie-Lavansch brought lyric-tenor warmth, and the full male chorus, resounding around the auditorium, helped in turning the vibrant screw towards the end of Act One. Not so the offstage horns: Ticciati held the bass line after the Act Two Prelude, hoping for an entry which didn't come, cued his Isolde and Brangane to carry on, and then had the blasts arrive late, seemingly unstoppable, over the voices. No surprise to learn that neither players nor offstage conductor were to blame; it was simply that someone hadn't pressed the button on a recording in time.

Pace-wise, Ticciati never put a movement wrong: slow-kindling Prelude rising to impassioned, but not too hasty, peak, was a paradigm of the act to come, with the ragings of Isolde's wrath before the shipboard meeting unbearably thrilling, and likewise the peaks and troughs of Act Three, from manic raving down to faltering heartbeat on three clarinets and fourth horn. One day, perhaps, we will witness a Tristan which is ideal in fusion of acting, singing and playing; but the demands are so massive that this may well be as good as it gets. At any rate Isolde's final "transfiguration through love", with voice and orchestra so luminously together, and stage image so variously lit as to make the standing figure seem to retreat before our very eyes, was true perfection. Certainly it's the case that a great Wagner conductor was born in Sussex this summer. Roll on Parsifal next year.

• Tristan und Isolde at Glyndebourne until 25 August
• More opera reviews on theartsdesk