Wagner’s scandalous opera – too sexy for the Victorians to stage
No opera has excited more controversy than this unique exploration of the psychology and morality of sexual infatuation. Powered by music of mesmerising sensuality that dissolves the laws of classical shape and regularity, its erotic intensity scandalised the Victorians and continues to fascinate and disturb today. Have Tristan and Isolde found a path to transcendental truth, or are they self-centred victims of their own folly? Wagner lets us to draw our own conclusions.
Plot
A mistress of the dark arts, Princess Isolde travels as a prisoner from Ireland to Cornwall on Tristan’s ship to marry Tristan’s uncle King Marke. She angrily tells her servant Brangäne how Tristan murdered her fiancé Morold and then sought her help to heal his own wounds. She could not then bring herself to kill him, but now she plans to hand Tristan a death potion, which she too will drink rather than marry Marke. Brangäne substitutes a love potion – and once they swallow it, Tristan and Isolde acknowledge their suppressed passion for each other.
Isolde marries Marke, but meets Tristan in secret at night to consummate their relationship in defiance of worldly values and restraints. Through the machinations of an envious courtier Melot, Marke catches them in the act and is appalled at Tristan’s betrayal of trust. Tristan is fatally wounded in a fight with Melot.
Transported to his castle in Brittany, Tristan lies dying – he dreams of Isolde. Finally, she arrives, as does Marke, who has decided he must yield her to Tristan after Brangäne explains the substitution of the love potion. But it is too late: Tristan dies, leaving Isolde to imagine herself united with him in a realm beyond death.
Background
Wagner wrote his own librettos, often drawing (as he did here) on medieval sagas and romances. This opera was composed between 1857 and 1859, half way through his work on the Ring cycle. To some extent, its themes reflect Wagner’s affair with married Mathilde Wesendonck, whose husband Otto was his supporter, but what underpins its philosophy is the mysticism of Arthur Schopenhauer and its insistence the world we experience daily is nothing but an illusion.
Tristan und Isolde was at first regarded as so immoral as to be unperformable, and its first production was abandoned after 77 rehearsals. Weeks after its eventual premiere in Munich in 1865 under the patronage of Ludwig II of Bavaria, the singer of Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr von
The singer of Tristan suddenly died after the premiere, fuelling fear of this toxic opera
Carolsfeld, suddenly died – contributing to the idea that the opera was dangerously toxic. But in the decadent culture of the fin de siècle it became iconic.
What makes it so great?
A plot driven by a muddle over a potion is a creaky device belonging to comic opera and surely weakens its plausibility – but in other respects this is a groundbreaking work of daring originality, both in terms of subject matter that seems to condone adultery and a seamless musical construction so harmonically volatile that it is often impossible to determine what key is being used. The atmosphere created is one of dense ambiguity and restless uncertainty, rising graphically in the love duet of the second act to feverish orgasmic ecstasy.
The title roles rank among the supreme challenges for sopranos and tenors, only essayed by those with large-scale voices, cast-iron techniques and reserves of stamina. Tristan’s dying delirium, to be sung with abandon over orchestration, is demanding, while an Isolde must encompass both the fire and brimstone of the first act and the long-breathed lyrical serenity of the Liebestod, the “love-death” that concludes the opera (and has become a familiar concert piece). Brangäne’s music is a more manageable proposition, much cherished by mezzo-sopranos; but King Marke, who gives a long headmasterly peroration when he discovers the lovers in flagrante, can emerge as a terrible bore.
Recordings
Three audio recordings lead the field. The vintage version dates from 1952: conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler with a magisterial sense of the score’s dramatic arc, it is blessed with Kirsten Flagstad’s regal yet ardent Isolde and Ludwig Suthaus’s movingly noble Tristan. For modern tastes, perhaps these lovers remain too dignified and buttoned-up, but their singing is superlative. The supporting cast is disappointing in comparison (EMI Classics).
A wonderful recording from the 1966 Bayreuth Festival has an edge of spontaneity, benefiting from the theatre’s acoustic. Karl Böhm is the most lyrical of Wagnerian conductors,
Birgit Nilsson presents a thrilling Isolde, if one perhaps more at home with the witchery of the first act than the sensuality of the second, Wolfgang Windgassen is a sterling Tristan, Christa Ludwig a peerless Brangäne and Eberhard Wächter and Martti Talvela are both tremendous as Kurwenal and Marke (Deutsche Grammophon).
A potent performance with excellent modern sound is the 1982 studio recording conducted by Carlos Kleiber, who bring a febrile volatility, all fire and air, to the score. His Isolde is Margaret Price, singing with ravishing tone and fine musical sensibility. Rene Kollo’s Tristan and Brigitte Fassbänder’s Brangäne are excellent too.
On DVD, Nina Stemme is a queenly yet seductive Isolde in a wonderfully numinous production from Glyndebourne, directed by Nikolaus Lehnhoff and conducted by Jiři Bělohlávek (Opus Arte).