Tristan and Isolde at Finnish National Opera

An opera about the ecstasy of love

The glowing passion of the overture plunges the listener into a whirl of yearning, love, fulfilment and death that lasts until the very end of the opera - and beyond: the emotional impact of this four-hour blockbuster lingers for a long time. There are no greater heights of ecstasy in all opera than in the overture, the love duet of Tristan and Isolde and the concluding scene, Isolde's Liebestod. "Tristan is and remains a marvel to me; I find it increasingly hard to comprehend how I could have created something like that," Wagner himself wrote. "Only uniquely talented performers can cope with it, and there are not many of them," he said.

The cast of the FNO production measures up to Wagner's standards. Isolde is played by Marion Amman, who made a convincing appearance in Die Frau ohne Schatten. Robert Dean Smith has previously appeared as Tristan at Bayreuth, in Vienna and at the Met. Lilli Paasikivi is Brangäne, and Tommi Hakala is Kurwenal - and who else could be King Marke but our own Matti Salminen?