Wonderful Isolde not enough to save a Tristan and Isolde scuttled by flat directing

Isolde alone cannot save this production

BAYREUTH, Germany — Tristan and Isolde, Wagner once wrote, was meant to be a “monument to that most beautiful of dreams” — love.

But in Christoph Marthaler’s production, this opera of sensual and psychological longing unto the death of the two lovers is more a memorial to boredom — over four hours of it.

As seen Friday in this revival performance rounding out this year’s Bayreuth Festival, little moves except the music.

This opera is admittedly challenging to stage. It is organically static, with what “action” there is taking place on a ship’s desk, a garden and under a linden tree, in Wagner’s original.

What’s more, the stage is dominated by only two characters, the star-crossed Tristan and Isolde, with the four other principals making only brief appearances.

Wagner obviously meant to give his music center stage. The orchestral complement to this opera is arguably the finest he has ever written — and the libretto reflects it, with the instruments often left to complete the main characters’ half-uttered unfinished phrases of ardor with wave after wave of crashing emotion breaking on breathtaking musical sensitivity.

But in Marthaler’s production it’s not a question of little staging, and little action. It’s as if he has given up and decided to put on a concert performance of the work.

Instead of a the deck of a rolling sailing ship making its way to Cornwall with Isolde, the betrothed of King Marke, we have a cruise ship’s lounge in deadly brown. Isolde is dressed variously in a shapeless knit dress and a yellow two-piece job complemented by Tristan’s buttondown blue blazer and flannels.

Not quite the dashing warrior Wagner envisaged. And it only gets worse.

Meant to be minimalist to transport the audience into the heart and soul of the opera, this production is skeletal in terms of acting.

The singers move so slowly that one is tempted to look for a snail’s wet track. And the two lovers hardly touch. In their supposedly passionate night garden scene — inside the ship’s lounge revamped to look like a school gym — Isolde opens the buttons of her jacket to reveal a prim blouse.

Tristan is obviously turned on.

He loosens his tie.

And so it goes. When the lovers expire, finally united forever in their “Liebestod” death scene, it’s a release — and not only for them.

In terms of voices, Friday’s performance should have been called “Isolde and Tristan.” Irene Theorin was in full register, transcending octaves without effort. She more than kept pace both with the orchestra and Robert Dean Smith, whose voice was pleasant but who, as Tristan, lacked the breadth needed to keep pace with his co-star.

Robert Holl was persuasive as King Marke, who absolves both his trusted Tristan and Isolde, his wife, of all guilt as he recognizes the inevitability of their love. Also good: Jukka Rasilainien as Kurwenal, Tristan’s comrade in arms, Michelle Breedt as Isolde’s maid, Brangane, and Ralf Lukas as the treacherous Melot.

Bayreuth veteran Peter Schneider coaxed a fine performance of an orchestra tasked with the challenges of sketching love eternal through finely shaded musical moods that vary from the most subtle foreshadowings and tender shudders to the veritable tidal waves of strings reflecting anger or ardor at their highest pitch.

But even the music could not save this production.

“Sleep without awakening,” to paraphrase Wagner himself.