Opus Arte must certainly be commended for bringing this production to DVD. Demand for last year's run at Glyndebourne was so great that I imagine many were unable to see it live. I managed to scrape a ticket for the first night - just - but infuriatingly a prior commitment demanded that I leave before Act III, an extraordinary Wagnerian act, here given unremittingly gripping treatment. In Acts I and II, Nikolaus Lehnhoff's production sets the drama on a stark but intimately curved platform, the black backdrop often drawing back to reveal a mesmeric spinning vortex, a womb of night encasing Tristan and Isolde's transcendental coupling. The eye is immediately drawn to the lovers by the production's circling lines, while Robin Carter's lighting bathes the stage in shimmering, rich blue and purple. Other characters step onstage seemingly through the side of the encasement, shockingly disrupting the intimacy of the visual tapestry. In Act III, bleak white sky glares upon Tristan's sublime suffering. The two acts that I saw live cast a bewitching spell through the auditorium, one that gradually drew the shamefully restless Glyndebourne to a state of rapturous wonderment.

Tragically, Opus Arte's well intentioned DVD release gives but some indication of the production's success in the theatre. Filming an opera performance cinematically can work (for example in Opus Arte's recent release of The Rake's Progress, in which the cast's uniformly superb acting is conveyed grippingly on the small screen), but here the decision to do so was a serious misjudgement. However many cameras were present at this performance (performed live but without an audience, I think) peer relentlessly at the characters and staging from various angles and distances. By intruding so closely into the unfolding action, we lose sight of the larger picture; one is not seduced.

While, from afar, the sets appeared organic, here they can seem manufactured, cumbersome and vulgarly overpowering, dwarfing the characters rather than absorbing them; in Act III, the ruffled texture of the backdrop soon becomes visible from up close, breaking the convincing illusion that this is, actually, sky. The acting, which seemed so economical live, now tends to look stilted and unconvincing. The singers must suffer the glare of the camera while negotiating Wagner's vocal writing: tenor Robert Gambill as Tristan, though gripping in his third act ravings, does not benefit from the close-ups, his acting tending to be generalised and his vocal struggle often apparent. The whole almost gains the appearance of a documentary: while viewing the performance in such detail, we see the singers' troubles and the production's construction, and we can then understand by what means this Tristan and Isolde succeeds. We do, however, miss that sense of success, finding it difficult to see the wood for the trees.

But the DVD is not unattractive in its own terms. I again found it hard to take my eyes off Nina Stemme, her portrait of Isolde psychologically complex and subtly projected. She also sings ravishingly, as she does on the EMI CD release under Antonio Pappano, though with perhaps a hint of steel creeping into the upper registers. Gambill, as previously noted, is superb in Act III, his stamina great and his delivery expressive. He is less successful in the lyricism of Act II, however, displaying often suspect intonation in the difficultly placed tenor lines. Bo Skovhus deserves credit for his intense, fantastically sung Kurwenal; the Brangäne, Katarina Karnéus, has too light a voice for this role, but she communicates much with her face and body; René Pape, as Marke, confirms his status as one of today's leading Wagner basses.

Jirí Belohlávek conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra with ebb and flow, and a sense of dramatic propulsion that makes the work flow fluidly past; the orchestral sound, barring a couple of moments of scrawny string timbre, is analytically exact and hauntingly rich. The Glyndebourne Chorus were magnificent live, placed at the top left of the auditorium, and their performance is captured successfully. If the camerawork were not so erratic, here could be a defining Tristan: as it is, this is an enlightening release for those who attended the live performances, but I cannot help but watch it with a deep sense of regret.

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