# How do you consume Tristan und Isolde?



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

How do you consume Tristan und Isolde?


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## mamascarlatti (Sep 23, 2009)

Actually I'm not that keen on it as a whole, although it has some wonderful moments.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

mamascarlatti said:


> Actually I'm not that keen on it as a whole, although it has some wonderful moments.


My god! Are you chaste?!


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Wonderful moments:

1. The Prelude
2. The Liebestod
3. Everything inbetween


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## Yashin (Jul 22, 2011)

Easier to watch than to listen to as a whole. The Oliver Py production will do for me on DVD


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Yashin said:


> The Oliver Py production will do for me on DVD


A curse on your family. Get out of my thread. Heathen witch!


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Like with all Wagner Imcan appreciate it in relative small doses. So I will listen to the bits I like best - eg the love duet and the Liebestod. Some of it is a bit of a bore. One just wishes Wagner had taken some tablets for verbal and scribal diarrhoea when he wrote the thing. 
As for worshipping it? Why should one worship a piece of music? I know Wagner demanded near worship from his adoring public but why turn something so secular into a religious rite?


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## Ebab (Mar 9, 2013)

For me, it's an emotional experience, even an existential one.

But another side of me watches it as a play where people come - as is continually being revealed over the course of all three acts - from a strongly defined place, make life-altering experiences that are precisely noted, in a language that is poetic and evocative but also very selective in the choice of words and imagery. Both Tristan and Isolde very much grow in these three acts, and it's thrilling to watch.

The emotional effect doesn't come by chance; it's the result of many very conscious creative decisions that make this great drama. It's an inspired re-telling of an old myth, trusts the power of the material but also adds new angles and uses an innovative dramatic approach. It's also an experiment trying to turn an abstract philosophical concept into a compelling story and bring it to life through the characters. For me, the experiment succeeds, spectacularly.

I can only encourage to _really_ read what is being said, preferably with only the libretto, in one's own time. It's an effort but one of the most rewarding ones that I've had in my life.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Preferably with the score as seeing it unfold is as sexy as the sounds. Deceptively simple, unbelievably vital - so, I read it, I crash out the chordal outlines on my crappy electronic keyboard, I listen

Now, if only there was a recording where the principals would sing what is written


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

Yashin said:


> The Oliver Py production will do for me on DVD


There's a sentence you don't read every...err...well, ever. 
Are _you_ Oliver Py?


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

> How do you consume Tristan und Isolde?


First I swallow Tristan, then I squeeze all the juices from Isolde and sip.

Such is the life of dragon.

I mean real one, Fafner was a poseur.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Relax on my couch. And listen to one complete act.
Then maybe a break. Then another act.
I'll only listen to recordings that have a complete act per disc.
I can't abide act breaks in this opera.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

I have just bought Karajan's Tristan from 1952 Bayreuth. It's absolutely white hot! Modl is incredible. Sonic limitations but wholly recommended from what I've heard.


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## Cosmos (Jun 28, 2013)

With some fava beans and a nice Chianti


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

I don't really worship at the shrine.

An Act at a time maybe. I tend to get on with something else while Mark is droning on at the end of the second Act. I suppose I could just skip it, but that seems disrespectful.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

GregMitchell said:


> I tend to get on with something else while Mark is droning on at the end of the second Act. I suppose I could just skip it, but that seems disrespectful.


Totally unlike leaving the recording playing and going to vacuum the other room.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Aramis said:


> Totally unlike leaving the recording playing and going to vacuum the other room.


Yes, the old boy does waffle on a bit. Like getting a rocket from the boss!


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I met a girl next yesterday named Tristan!!!!! I was speechless! A girl!


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Aramis said:


> Totally unlike leaving the recording playing and going to vacuum the other room.


I might choose something a little less noisy. To be honest, I doubt Mark would notice. Most of his audience are asleep anyway.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Couchie said:


> Wonderful moments:
> 
> 1. The Prelude
> 2. The Liebestod
> 3. Everything inbetween


Some of my favorite moments are:

1. The end of Act 1 - Tristan and Isolde drink the potion and at the same moment their ship arrives to the shore of King Marke's kingdom, the crowd welcomes the royal bride, and the king himself comes to take her ashore, but their whole selves are only fixed on each other.

Kurwenal:
King Marke is coming in the boat with his entourage!
Tristan:
Who is coming?
Kurwenal:
The king!
Tristan:
What... king?

2. The end of Act 2 when the lovers are discovered, and Tristan, believing they are both about to be killed, asks Isolde if she will follow him into the death's realm of night:

_...das Wunderreich der Nacht,
aus der ich einst erwacht;
das bietet dir Tristan,
dahin geht er voran:
ob sie ihm folge
treu und hold, -
das sag' ihm nun Isold'!_

... the wondrous realm of night
that I once awoke from -
that offers you Tristan 
there he goes ahead of you.
whether she will follow him, faithful and lovely,
let Isolde now tell him.

I am always in tears by this moment.

I have not yet found a DVD that would cut it for me, so I listen to it, with the libretto in front of me.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

SiegendesLicht said:


> I have not yet found a DVD that would cut it for me, so I listen to it, with the libretto in front of me.


I doubt whether you ever will. Wagner's operas tend to be for the mind and the senses rather than visual. That is one of the reasons his grandson moved away from naturalism to ideas suggested by Appia and also his reading of Freud and Jung.
There is a creaky old black & white film of the Tristan production that was from 1966. Not at Bayreuth though. I think it's the only Colette Weiland Wagner production on film. Some of it is on YouTube.
I find seeing the thing just distracts. Just float your aural imagination!


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Usually one Act at a time, but if I'm watching it, I'll consume it in its whole glory.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Non-obsessively.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

PetrB said:


> Non-obsessively.


You should let your hair down once in a while.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Couchie said:


> You should let your hair down once in a while.


Of the very few I have left, which one?


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

DavidA said:


> I have just bought Karajan's Tristan from 1952 Bayreuth. It's absolutely white hot! Modl is incredible. Sonic limitations but wholly recommended from what I've heard.


A HvK Tristan is included in the Bayreuth historical box set Wagner's Vision, but I can't recall now if it's the same 1952 performance.


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## Oreb (Aug 8, 2013)

An old friend of my father's used to laugh about our familial fondness for very hot curries.

"I suppose you keep some toilet paper in the fridge" he'd say, "to get you through the Day After!"

While Oreb Snr maintained his love of very hot vindaloos until his dying day, I find I can only take so much as I get older. I still enjoy a very hot curry, but not as often.

It's the same these days with my ears (if you'll pardon the anagram). _TuI_ is something I am rarely in the mood for - it's intensity is overwhelming.

Listening to a true master like Jon Vickers on the Karajan recording is sublime but excoriating, and I doubt that putting ear buds in the fridge would help.

Which is to say that these days I'm more a _Meistersinger_ kind of guy.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Revenant said:


> A HvK Tristan is included in the Bayreuth historical box set Wagner's Vision, but I can't recall now if it's the same 1952 performance.


Must be as there was only one recorded performance. It's probably the greatest performance of this work ever recorded and is worth having despite the limited recording. Bit like Horowitz's Rach 3 with Barbirolli - just glad we have it at all.
It is said that Karajan was so exhausted by conducting this Tristan that he had to be helped out of the orchestra pit. He sought other ways to conduct it especially after Keilberth collapsed and died in the orchestra pit during a performance of the same opera.


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## Freddie von Rost (Dec 3, 2013)

Apart from the rather lush Prelude? With gritted teeth. Or to misquote D Adams:

_A number of listeners believe that the best sound balance is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles away, whilst the HIFI should be operated by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship, which stays in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet. _

I must admit to some bias here. I spent a lot of time in Germany as a child surrounded by the Nordic/Germanic sagas and Wagner. Whilst Wagner is technically superb, his operas do rather go on. And on.


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## Revenant (Aug 27, 2013)

DavidA said:


> Must be as there was only one recorded performance. It's probably the greatest performance of this work ever recorded and is worth having despite the limited recording. Bit like Horowitz's Rach 3 with Barbirolli - just glad we have it at all.
> It is said that Karajan was so exhausted by conducting this Tristan that he had to be helped out of the orchestra pit. He sought other ways to conduct it especially after Keilberth collapsed and died in the orchestra pit during a performance of the same opera.


Good to know that it's the one. My knowledge of this opera's recording history is thin. I haven't listened to it yet, as I'm still wending my way through the rest of the boxed set. I do know that Keilberth wasn't the only conductor who died in the pit of this opera, there was also Felix Mottl earlier in the century. Not to mention the first Tristan who died a couple of weeks after the performance. I read somewhere that Wagner commented: "Art can be murder." I don't know if he really said that, but somehow it sounds like something that he would say. _Se non e vero, e ben trovato_.


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## Celloman (Sep 30, 2006)

I don't consume it.

I _am_ it.


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## starthrower (Dec 11, 2010)

I've become a fan on this very day! Dialed up the 70s von Karajan recording on YouTube. I wish I would've bought this instead of the Hindemith opera I purchased. I love Hindemith, but the singing in Mathis der Maler doesn't do much for me.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Revenant said:


> Good to know that it's the one. My knowledge of this opera's recording history is thin. I haven't listened to it yet, as I'm still wending my way through the rest of the boxed set. I do know that Keilberth wasn't the only conductor who died in the pit of this opera, there was also Felix Mottl earlier in the century. Not to mention the first Tristan who died a couple of weeks after the performance. I read somewhere that Wagner commented: "Art can be murder." I don't know if he really said that, but somehow it sounds like something that he would say. _Se non e vero, e ben trovato_.


I think Sinopoli also died while conducting Tristan.


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## Alydon (May 16, 2012)

I think just listening to this opera is enough for me, and I'm stuck on the old Furtwangler original EMI recording for though better recorded sound is now available the intense passion and direction is so lacking in some other recordings. I have noticed that this remains many people's favourite Wagner work as when all is said and done you can actually cover the whole work in an afternoon or evening rather than the time required for The Ring Cycle.


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## Tehzim (May 19, 2013)

I close my eyes, put on my headphones and listen to Kirsten Flagstad and Wilhelm Furtwangler drag me into night. And since Tristan und Isolde is rather static (mostly in the heads of the leads) it lends itself particularly well to listening instead of watching. And my secret to when Wagner's words keep flowing is to ignore the words and just listen to the music. Repeat after me: Let go and let Wagner.


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