Igor Markevitch Classic Archive | Wagner: Tristan Und Isolde (Prelude & Liebestod)

Wagner: Tristan Und Isolde (Prelude & Liebestod)
Orchestre National de l'ORTF
Filmed at the Besançon XXI International Festival
15 September 1968

Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Isolde) is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. As always, Wagner wrote the words for the opera himself. He took the famous old legend which had been told by the German poet Gottfried von Strassburg.

"Liebestod" (German for "love death") is the title of the final, dramatic music from the 1859 opera Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner. It is the climactic end of the opera, as Isolde sings over Tristan's dead body.

The Prelude and Liebestod is a concert version of the overture and Isolde's Act 3 aria, arranged by Wagner, which was first performed in 1862, before the first performance of the opera itself in 1865. The Liebestod can be performed either in a purely orchestral version, or with a soprano singing Isolde's vision of Tristan brought back to life.