Tristan und Isolde, Glyndbourne Festival Opera, Glyndebourne<br></br>Jephtha, Welsh National Opera, Cardiff

Be careful where you point that thing

Wagner at Glyndebourne. An event to savour, surely? The kind of extraordinary, exemplary operatic experience that lives with you for a lifetime? This, I am sure, is precisely what Nikolaus Lehnhoff's absorbing, abstracted production of Tristan und Isolde - Glyndebourne's first full production of a Wagner opera - is aiming towards. And had you asked me whether I thought it had achieved that ideal in the first interval of the first performance, when the beet-red shame and erotic confusion of the doomed lovers was hot and sweet and raw, when designer Roland Aeschlimann's lighting had magnetised and shocked with its daring, and conductor Jiri Belohlavek's fevered accelerando to the climax of Act I was still in my bloodstream, the answer would have been an unqualified affirmative. Four hours later, however, all I felt was faint confusion at being apparently the only member of the audience who felt, well, nothing much at all.

At the risk of being the party pooper to what is, by any estimation, a production that offers some stunning images, some great playing, and at least three terrific performances, Glyndebourne's Tristan was not the cohesive, enveloping, transformative experience it might have been. I doubt that Belohlavek's Wagner will ever float my boat (the last 20 minutes of Act I and the opening ten of Acts II and III being signal exceptions to an otherwise frigid and overly linear account) in quite the way that Donald Runnicles's did. But I suspect that the main reason I failed to respond is more prosaic. Having spoken to friends in the stalls who were quite bowled over, and having developed eye-strain from squinting at Nina Stemme's slowly disappearing Isolde and ear-strain from tuning in to her voice over the lusty London Philharmonic from my seat in the foyer circle, I can only conclude that Leonhoff's is one of those productions designed for the front row. (And I wonder just how many of these I may have missed through happy accidents of seating?)

Of course Isolde's physical diminution is, during the Liebestod, entirely deliberate. (Unlike Belohlavek's drowning of her voice, which presumably isn't.) The image at this point is mesmerising, as Stemme's silver-clad body recedes into the dark, blue-black depths of Aeschlimann's whorl of a set like a phosphorescent sea creature sliding behind a rock. The lighting here, and in several key scenes, is the most expressive you could hope to see, and I couldn't fault the singing or acting of Stemme, Rene Pape (King Marke) or Bo Skovhus (Kurwenal). As the eponymous hero, Robert Gambill - another bionic baritone rebuilt as a tenor - also sings well but acts stiffly, though his Act III duet with Skovhus displays a connection unrealised in the earlier acts. And here's the problem: when so much is invested in the separate psychologies of the lovers, when so much detail has been lavished on their relationships to their confessor-companions Kurwenal and Brangäne (a gurgly Yvonne Wiedstruck), on the outrage committed against Isolde before we meet her (an aspect often lost by less analytical directors), and the strikingly different "losses" of each through their erotic obsession with the other - in Tristan's case "honour", in Isolde's "shame" - is there anything left to put into that long Act II duet? I never thought I'd advocate a less cerebral approach to Tristan but more passion and less post-Freudian analysis might make for a stronger experience.

That said, Lehnhoff does not - as others have - suggest that this affair is all in the mind. After drinking the love potion, Tristan and Isolde spring apart as though blasted by mortar fire then reel and crawl with the nauseated intoxication of migraine victims. Still, I find it sad that a soprano whose face, as much as her voice, supplied so much important information in Keith Warner's ENO production of Manon should be obscured in this far-smaller house. Aeschlimann's set is an eloquent frame to the drama, but when you have a young, sexy, gamine, intuitive Isolde - yes, you did read that correctly - with the kind of mouth and eyes that silent movies were created for and a quicksilver spinto voice that bites and snarls with appetite and intelligence, why put a distance of minimum six feet, maximum 20 between her and the front of the stage? But perhaps, having sat in just about every position in this unusually equitable acoustic, I found the only blind-spot - deaf-spot? - in the auditorium. Go see Tristan for yourselves but splash out on an upgrade if you can. If you can't, then it's time to invest in a pair of opera glasses.

Were I to list every reason why pointing your car to the M4 instead of the A23 is a good idea, I'd be scribbling all the way to the back page. But Katie Mitchell's production of Jephtha for Welsh National Opera is one of those precious productions that lift baroque works from their customary context only to intensify - rather than dilute, or muddle, or pervert - their message. Set in occupied 1940s Europe, Mitchell's Jephtha avoids direct historical parallels while subtly hinting at the Holocaust through the now ubiquitous chain of Boltanski lightbulbs threaded through the shell-blasted palace of Jephtha (Mark Padmore), Storge (Susan Bickley), and their daughter Iphis (Sarah Tynan). But this drama - whereby Jephtha's bargain for victory in battle is the sacrifice of his child - is less overtly political than Idomeneo and, in Handel's humanistic hands, less rigidly religious than Abraham and Issac. Mitchell's adept reading therefore focuses on the anguish of Jephtha and Storge, the fracture of their relationship, the appalling torture of Iphis, and the discomfort of the Israelites at the actions of their doctrinaire leader and his bully-boy brother, Zebul (Christopher Purves). Despite the last minute intervention of an angel (Charlotte Ellett), who stays the execution in exchange for Iphis's virginity to be held in perpetuity - thus breaking the heart of her traumatised sweetheart Hamor (Daniel Taylor) - no-one is happy at the end of this opera. The cruel usage of one human being to theocratic, political and careerist ends is shown as nothing more than a crime.

Mitchell's organisation and individuation of the WNO chorus and Vicki Mortimer's quick-change set are both startlingly good. Padmore, Bickley, Taylor and Tynan (looking barely pubescent) are heartbreaking. Purves is as mean as a Mitchell brother with a headache, and Ellet a beautiful, thoughtful presence. It's a gorgeous, powerful, clever production; played with brio by WNO's orchestra and winningly conducted by Paul McCreesh. Jephtha will be touring, though those in Birmingham, Oxford and Plymouth might prefer to catch the staged performances in Wales, where every note and dramatic nuance rings clear.

a.picard@independent.co.uk

'Tristan und Isolde': Glyndebourne (01273 813813) to 4 July and live on BBC Radio 3, 7 June. 'Jephtha': Welsh National Opera, Cardiff (029 2087 8889) to 4 June, then touring