Opera Explained | Tristan und Isolde by Wagner (Audio)

"An Introduction to...Wagner - Tristan und Isolde" written and narrated by Christopher Cook. With Sean Barrett as Richard Wagner, Elaine Claxton as Minna Wagner and Laura Paton as Mathilde Wesendonck.

Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde is encrusted with myths, and like all myths there’s a grain of truth in each of them. To an extent, the direction of Western art music was changed by Tristan, which accelerated the collapse of traditional tonality; the opera does draw on the composer’s own life and his relationship with Mathilde Wesendonck; and while the premiere performances in Munich in 1865 didn’t, as is often assumed, actually kill the first Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, this is still a work that makes enormous demands on its principal singers, psychologically as well as musically. When one great soprano was asked to name the essential ingredient for singing Wagner’s heroines, she’s supposed to have replied, ‘a pair of sensible shoes’! You need physical stamina as well as a voice in peak condition to tackle the roles of Isolde and Tristan.

Tristan und Isolde centres around two lovers who dream of romantic love and yearn for oblivion. No composer had written such a work before. Turning his back on traditional tonality, Wagner changed the course of Western music with Tristan und Isolde. But there’s also fact behind the fiction: while he wrote his opera Wagner was in love with another’s man’s wife, Mathilde Wesendonck. So Tristan and Isolde are also Richard and Mathilde. Christopher Cook explores the making of a masterpiece, the story of lovers gripped by a passion that can only be consummated beyond the grave, a forbidden love that is blind to duty, honour and social obligation.

Music from Tristan und Isolde:
Tristan Wolfgang Millgram, tenor
King Marke Lennart Forsén, bass
Isolde Hedwig Fassbender, soprano
Kurwenal Gunnar Lundberg, baritone
Melot Magnus Kyhle, tenor
Brangäne Martina Dike, mezzo-soprano

Royal Swedish Opera Male Chorus (sailors, knights and squires)
Royal Swedish Opera Orchestra
Conducted by Leif Segerstam

Tracklist:

- Background
1. ‘Since I have never in my life...’
2. When Richard Wagner began to compose Tristan und Isolde...
3. The music of Lohengrin...

- Composition
4. Tristan’s sailor looks to the horizon for Cornwall...
5. The prose sketch for Tristan und Isolde...
6. For the first and only time...
7. Wagner’s most beautiful 7 of dreams...

- The Opera
8. Tristan und Isolde was never intended to be...
9. Isolde, however, rails against Tristan...
10. Act II takes place at night...
11. Then, for a second time in the opera...
12. Before the start of the Third Act...
13. Tristan begins to rave again...
14. The shepherd boy pipes another...