In our production of TRISTAN AND ISOLDE we replace the traditional love potion with a drug of the modern age. The unconditional love between Tristan and Isolde is the result of a heroin trip and the set designer wanted the IV injection equipment etc to be as authentic as possible; after all, the doctors among our audiences - Wagner lovers in particular - are not going to be fobbed off with fake props. Which meant sourcing a stainless-steel tray, a chrome kidney dish, two lengths of rubber tubing and a syringe – all familiar to medical professionals in pharmacies and doctors’ surgeries. We’ve even got real needles, which I’ve blunted and blocked off to stop singers injuring themselves – although there still has to be a flow of air so the liquid can be drawn into the syringe. And at the end of it all I wrapped the tips in Sellotape, which was pretty fiddly. The only ingredient we did without was the heroin. Wagner is intoxicating enough, after all.