... Und ...

We had a very late start this morning. I was singing Wagner all night so didn't get to sleep until the early hours, and we had only just got back from our walk when the Waitrose delivery man arrrived. Thirty two huge bottles of sparkling water in packs of four, weighing a ton. I don't know how I dared. Last time I ordered water in bulk it was a woman I know from the store who brought them, and I was so embarrassed.

I was singing and dreaming of Wagner because I saw Tristan und Isolde last night, and of course couldn't get the music out of my head. In fact I've just remembered I plan to play my recording today to see how it compares. It couldn't be better, and it's unlikely to be as good. But a strange thing happened as the performance began. No surtitles. A few people got up and went to report the fault, and the projectionist tried to retrieve them but to no avail. There was sighing in the half-empty cinema, mutterings, and hisses of Shhhhhh! Some people left. But after a few minutes I realised I didn't miss them, in fact I concentrated on the music and singing much more than I would have done with them popping up all the time. This came as a big surprise, surtitles being such a fantastic boon to opera-goers normally, and this is hard-core opera, not for the faint-hearted. OK, it was hard to follow the action, set as it seemed to be on a military ship with a lot of thuggish, muscled men threatening both Isolde and her maid Brangane with sexual violence, a million miles from the usual medieval knights and masted sailing ship. The staging was harsh and industrial, monochromatic like the singers' costumes - floor-length tweed overcoats? Huge boots? And that was just the women. Horrible.

But the music! I've seen this opera four or five times before and have never loved it as much as this. Sylvia, a fellow Snape usher, came and joined me in the interval and then remained in the seat behind me. "I'm walking out if they haven't come back in Act 2," she declared. "I might as well be listening on the radio." I told her I thought it was much better without but she didn't agree. The second act began and still the screen was bare. But the singing, oh, it was in a league I've rarely witnessed before. Nina Stemme was incredible, singing as she does constantly for most of the four and a half hours. Stuart Skelton was an almost unbelievably beautiful Tristan, plus the thrilling Ekaterina Gubenova and Renee Pape as the other two main characters. In the past I've always loved Act 3 best, but it was this middle act that just blew me away. I realised Sylvia hadn't moved, and in the next interval she was as amazed as me at how much better the experience had been without the surtitles. Come the third act, and it took a while to realise that they were back. But what a nuisance they were, what a distraction.

I don't think their absence would work for many operas, but it did for this one, with this cast. The music is as sublime as anything ever written, more so, and Wagner with his feet of clay was surely directly connected to the divine. There are many things in the world that inspire us to experience utter and complete perfection, pure unexpurgated joy. But I've never found one that does it as completely, as gloriously as this one.