This page presents a review by David Gyger that featured in Opera Australia, 1993.
Fine music, weak drama
Author; David Gyger, Opera Australia
Gillian Whitehead’s Tristan and Iseult was performed in the highly intimate physical context of the Mori Gallery in suburban Leichhardt, a room that is scarcely more spacious than your average suburban lounge room but surrounded on three sides by balcony wide enough to accommodate four singers and the 13-piece orchestra required for Tristan and Iseult.
In this performance, the singers performed as if at a concert and mummers in costume engaged in a pantomime of the unfolding story on the lower level of the hall in front of most of the audience.
Musically it was an enormously different story: conductor Simon Romanos was firmly in control of the proceedings from beginning to end and thoroughly at ease in Whitehead’s interestingly modern musical idiom, and obtained a consistently excellent performance from his small band of instrumentalists.
All four singers were adequate to the demands of the roles, with particular marks to Bronwen Powell’s Iseult and Brian Evans’ Tristan.