Richard Wagner operas are big in every sense — many hours long, epic in plot and score, and grandly staged. Wagner himself encouraged the latter: In 1875, he built a large theater in Bayreuth, Germany, specifically to stage his own works. Things have only gotten bigger since. The Metropolitan Opera’s 2010 Ring cycle — a four-opera, 15-hour affair — featured a 90,000-pound set of pivoting metal planks and towers; its 2026 production of Tristan und Isolde was staged in a giant tunnel.
Yet Wagner can also shine in a small theater in small-town Vermont, as conductor-and-soprano couple Hugh Keelan and Jenna Rae have proven.
The Brattleboro musicians launched their mid-August Wagner in Vermont festival in the 750-seat Latchis Theatre in 2019. Their first opera was Tristan und Isolde. The medieval love story inspired the name of their production company, TUNDI, which joins the lovers’ first initials with und (German for “and”). The company went on to perform parts of the Ring cycle each year until it staged the whole thing in 2025.
This month, TUNDI returns to its roots with two performances of Tristan. Rae will sing Isolde to tenor Alan Schneider’s Tristan. Music director Keelan will conduct an orchestra of nearly 50 musicians and a chorus of 20. The festival will also feature Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), Act 2 of Parsifal, talks by experts, and performances of scenes and songs from an array of Wagner operas.
At the Latchis, TUNDI’s onstage orchestra will sit behind a sheer scrim that displays projected images and English supertitles. The theatre’s small stage, properly managed, is actually the best way to experience Wagner, according to Keelan. At enormous places such as the Met, “the performers are drops in a very large pool,” he said by phone. “At Latchis, we can promise people will be immersed within 10 minutes. We use the catwalks and balconies so there’s a quality of surround sound. People will experience these superpower singers with incredible force and impact.”
Keelan, 68, is a Brit from outside London who gained his first conducting experience unexpectedly. As the second pianist in a youth orchestra touring Soviet Russia, he was suddenly asked to conduct the first pianist’s concerto at the Moscow Conservatory. He was 16. Keelan went on to study conducting in Britain and the United States, then became an orchestra and opera director in the U.S. and abroad. He moved from New York to Vermont in 1995 to raise a family and now teaches at the Putney School and directs the Windham Philharmonic, a community orchestra.
During his work before founding TUNDI, Keelan assisted some remarkable figures. As staff pianist at the Juilliard School’s former American Opera Center, he worked with coaches and conductors from the Met. In England, he was assistant conductor at Covent Garden with Sir Colin Davis and Sir Georg Solti. At Glyndebourne, the summer opera festival in southern England, he worked with conductor Bernard Haitink, set and costume designer Maurice Sendak, and translator Tom Stoppard.
“It was the world of learning and training,” Keelan said. But that career wasn’t giving him what he wanted: the chance to do Wagner. The composer’s work is “not just a sublime experience,” he said. “It’s politically important, socially important and truly capable of transforming [audiences].”
Rae, meanwhile, has the voice for Wagner. The two met in 2008 when she auditioned for an Italian opera with his Hugh Keelan Ensemble. Originally from Massachusetts, Rae, 51, fell in love with the music of Tristan as a high schooler. She studied clarinet at Northwestern University but soon switched to vocal performance after faculty members noticed her “big” voice, she said. After some years off to raise a family, Rae returned to singing at just the right time — that is, with a mature voice.
Wagner requires singing “so loudly and brightly for such a long time,” Rae said by phone between rehearsals. “Generally, people don’t take on those solo roles until their mid- to late thirties.”
Rae, who is a music director at the Putney School, spent two years preparing for the role of Isolde with Schneider, who also played opposite her in the inaugural Tristan.
“We had no idea that this would work,” she said, referring to the first festival. Fortunately, Rae and Keelan have been able to harness the expertise of many musicians who love Wagner but rarely get the chance to perform his works.
That has made the low-budget performances particularly moving.
“People come to us in tears and say, ‘I had a profound experience,’” Keelan said. Rae agreed: Although Tristan is 4.5 hours long, “a lot of people lose a sense of time and have these huge emotional reactions.” Wagner appeals even to people unfamiliar with classical music, she added, because it “sounds like a movie soundtrack or what you might hear in a video game.”
Brattleboro resident and classical fan Teddy Martin, 37, spoke of being equally affected. Martin, who grew up listening to opera, described the Met’s Ring cycle, which he saw in 2012, as overblown and “ridiculous,” while TUNDI’s 2025 version felt “much more human.” He was so entranced that he asked how to become involved. This year, he is festival coordinator.
“I’ve often felt bored at operas, and I was sitting there rapt the entire time,” Martin recalled of last year’s performances. “These productions feel so alive to me, so real.
“It’s a wonderful incongruity,” he added. “These huge, epic works are happening in this small town.” ➆
The original print version of this article was headlined “Small Town, Big Opera | TUNDI Productions brings Wagner’s epic works to Brattleboro”
This article appears in August 12 • 2026.
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