Tristan and Isolde

Overview

About one hundred pages of libretto, Wagner’s opera in three acts, written between 1857 and 1859 and first performed in 1865, for which he wrote both the poem and the music, drawing on Gottfried von Strassburg’s medieval romance. Tristan is bringing the Irish princess Isolde to Cornwall as bride for his uncle King Marke; she means to poison them both for his killing of her betrothed, but her servant substitutes a love potion.

Discovered together in the king’s garden, Tristan is wounded and taken to his castle in Brittany, where he dies as Isolde arrives; she sings over his body and follows him in death. Its opening chord and unresolved harmony marked a turning point in Western music.

What happens

The prelude. The orchestra opens with a chord that does not resolve, and the yearning phrase built on it will not be released until the last bars of the opera.

Act One. On the ship to Cornwall Isolde tells Brangäne how she nursed the wounded Tristan, who had killed her betrothed Morold, and let him live when she saw his eyes. Furious at being brought as Marke’s bride, she demands that Tristan drink atonement with her; Brangäne substitutes the love potion for the poison, and as the ship lands they fall into each other’s arms.

Act Two. In the castle garden by night, while Marke hunts, Isolde extinguishes the torch as a signal. The lovers sing through the night that day is the realm of illusion and night the realm of truth, and long to die together into it. Brangäne warns from the tower; Marke returns, betrayed, and asks why; Tristan lets Melot wound him.

Act Three. In his ruined castle in Brittany Tristan lies wounded, tended by Kurwenal, and in fever curses the potion and longs for Isolde. A shepherd’s pipe announces her ship; Tristan tears off his bandages and dies in her arms as she arrives.

The end. Marke’s ship follows; Kurwenal is killed defending the castle; Marke, who had come to forgive, finds Tristan dead. Isolde, over the body, sings of Tristan waking and smiling, of melodies rising, of sinking and drowning into the world’s breath, and dies.

How to read it

Read the libretto with the score, as the recommended edition and the St. John’s programme intend, since the opening chord that does not resolve for four hours is the drama’s real argument.

Pay close attention to how the potion, which causes the passion in Gottfried, here only releases what the lovers already felt, and to what that does to the question of their guilt.

Notice the second act’s argument that day and the world are the illusion and night and death the truth, and read it beside Schopenhauer, whom Wagner had just discovered.

Consider Marke’s question in the second act, why, which no one answers, and ask what the opera thinks it owes to the world the lovers reject.

Read this libretto alongside Romeo and Juliet to compare two dramas in which lovers die together, one where death defeats love and one where death is what love wants.

Questions it raises

• Is the love potion the cause of the passion or only its excuse, and does the answer change whether Tristan and Isolde are guilty of anything?
• What does it mean to call the Tristan chord the beginning of modern music, and can a listener hear the claim without knowing the theory?
• Is the second act’s philosophy of night and death a profound truth about desire or a seductive way of refusing to live, and does the opera know the difference?
• What does Marke’s unanswered question do to a drama that asks us to side with the lovers against the world?
• Is Isolde’s Liebestod a transfiguration or a suicide, and does the music decide what the words leave open?
• What did Wagner mean by claiming that drama and music are one art, and does this work prove it or only make the claim irresistible?