# Tristan....a personnal semi revelation.................



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

I was always a little foggy regarding the love potion 
and its meaning.
After reading the notes included in the booklet from the Bohm '66 Bayreuth Tristan it snapped into focus
for me.

Here is what it says in the Act 1 synopsis:
"Bent on revenge (against Tristan) she'd gone to his bedside with his sword to kill him, but when their eyes met the weapon fell from her hand. This meeting of eyes, which was followed by no explanatory word, no declaration of love,* IS THE KEY TO THE WHOLE DRAMA. *
With nothing further said, Isolde nursed Tristan back to health. With the picture of the "fairest queen" in his heart he took his leave, swearing eternal devotion.

Sipping to the potion now:
"When Kurnvenal invites the ladies to prepare to disembark the ship Isolde tells him she will not follow Tristan if he refuses to make atonement for killing her betrothed. This threat finally compels him to appear before her. Isolde refuses to take his sword and points to the "sweet draught of atonement" Firmly believing that he is now drinking his own death, Tristan seizes the cup; immediately after he has drunk Isolde snatches it from him to drink her share. But instead of the deadly poison Brangaene has poured the love potion into the cup.
*NEVERTHELESS, IT IS NOT THE DRUG THAT TRANSFORMS THEM BUT THE THOUGHT THAT THEY ARE ABOUT TO DIE TOGETHER.
IN THE FACE OF WHAT THEY BELIEVE TO BE THEIR IMPENDING DEATH, THEY ARE FREE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR LOVE.*

Of course!!! Makes so much sense! Of course, that's it!


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Itullian said:


> I was always a little foggy regarding the love potion
> and its meaning.
> After reading the notes included in the booklet from the Bohm '66 Bayreuth Tristan it snapped into focus
> for me.
> ...


Where have you been? I've been saying that repeatedly since I joined this forum! Wagner's treatment of the story differs from the medieval romance in making the pair already in love, which gives their behavior and conversation before the drinking of the potion great tension. Conveying the complexity of their feelings is a challenge for the singers as actors.


----------



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Where have you been? I've been saying that repeatedly since I joined this forum! Wagner's treatment of the story differs from the medieval romance in making the pair already in love, which gives their behavior and conversation before the drinking of the potion great tension. Conveying the complexity of their feelings is a challenge for the singers as actors.


Sorry Woodduck. I guess I must have missed it or it didn't sink in.
I'm glad you checked in on it.


----------



## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

Yeah it's also my interpretation that the love potion is essentially an impotent liquid that merely unlocks pre-existing feelings due to circumstance, and not a true love potion in the sense of "Gotterdammerung".

Then again, there's the theory that it's an anticholinergic poison resulting in delirium (do any other composers get publications in medical journals?): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300813/


----------



## Granate (Jun 25, 2016)

We've got a thread called *Let's Talk... Tristan und Isolde.* One of my posts also talks about Wooduck's comments and JP Ponelle's production.

There you have all the answers!


----------



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Where have you been? I've been saying that repeatedly since I joined this forum! *Wagner's treatment of the story differs from the medieval romance in making the pair already in love,* which gives their behavior and conversation before the drinking of the potion great tension. Conveying the complexity of their feelings is a challenge for the singers as actors.


What a stroke of genius!


----------



## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

> *NEVERTHELESS, IT IS NOT THE DRUG THAT TRANSFORMS THEM BUT THE THOUGHT THAT THEY ARE ABOUT TO DIE TOGETHER.
> IN THE FACE OF WHAT THEY BELIEVE TO BE THEIR IMPENDING DEATH, THEY ARE FREE TO ACKNOWLEDGE THEIR LOVE.*


Wagner's Tristan does benefit greatly from knowing the backstory that leads up to begining of the opera......only hints of the couple's past history is gleaned from actual opera libretto, the ironic tragedy of it all is that if Tristan would have just told Marke of the couples past he most likely would would have blessed the union such was his love for this boy he raised as if he were his own son.....

I recommend watching the movie once that will give you all the backstory and make sense of all that happens during the opera including the bonds between Tristan and Marke, and Tristan and Kurwenal (which are not explained well during opera)


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Granate said:


> We've got a thread called *Let's Talk... Tristan und Isolde.* One of my posts also talks about Wooduck's comments and JP Ponelle's production.
> 
> There you have all the answers!


Thanks for bringing up that thread, Granate. I'd forgotten how much interesting discussion it contains.


----------



## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

Another way to think about it is that we think that they've accidentally drunk a love potion instead of a death potion. But in fact, they were already in love and fighting their urges; in drinking the draught, they enter the world of night and passion, and forsake the world of day of their roles in their society, and in so doing, they have taken steps that lead inevitably to their deaths. In fact, it was a death draught all along.


----------



## Pure Fool (Jul 30, 2018)

You won't want to see that movie more than once. It's low budget shows every step of the way. The acting is second rate. Oh, and I love that one of the bad guys is named Wicktred. You are right, though, that it does clarify the story.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

This theory is romantic but it does not appear to be in Wagner's text. Rather it appears a spin on it. Isolde spared Tristan when he looked into his eyes because 'his wretchedness tormented me' not because she loved him. She then goes on to say how much she regrets not polishing him off when she had the chance. Her subsequent words: 'Curse you, vile creature, a curse upon your head! Vengeance! Death!Death for us both!' don't exactly appear to be a woman in love. Now of course you could say it's all bluff and inner anger but it's not in the text. What is in the text is the fact that Brangena has brewed up a love potion rather than a death potion and this is what makes them fall in love. As she says: 'Ah! Alas! Inescapable eternal misery instead of an early death! The deceiving effects of foolish loyalty now bear their miserable fruit.'


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> *This theory is romantic but it does not appear to be in Wagner's text.* Rather it appears a spin on it. Isolde spared Tristan when he looked into his eyes because 'his wretchedness tormented me' not because she loved him. She then goes on to say how much she regrets not polishing him off when she had the chance. Her subsequent words: 'Curse you, vile creature, a curse upon your head! Vengeance! Death!Death for us both!' don't exactly appear to be a woman in love. Now of course *you could say it's all bluff and inner anger but it's not in the text.* What is in the text is the fact that Brangena has brewed up a love potion rather than a death potion and this is what makes them fall in love. As she says: 'Ah! Alas! Inescapable eternal misery instead of an early death! The deceiving effects of foolish loyalty now bear their miserable fruit.'


Have another look at the text, and listen to the music. Isolde hears the young sailor repeat his lonely song about the Irish girl he left behind:

Freshly the wind blows
towards home:
my Irish child,
where are you now?
Is it your wafting sighs
that swell my sails?
Blow, blow, you wind!
Ah, alas, my child!

The orchestra quietly and hauntingly takes us back to the beginning of the prelude, and Isolde sings, to the motif of longing:

Chosen for me,
lost to me,
splendid and strong,
bold and cowardly!
Death-devoted head!
Death-devoted heart!

Later, accompanying Isolde's account of how Tristan looked into her eyes and she pitied him, the orchestra again takes up music from the prelude, this time eight bars of the principal melody in C major. There can be no question about what this rich, romantic theme is telling us about the emotions Isolde is harboring. Again, after she curses Tristan, and Brangaene tries to comfort her with thoughts of being the noble Marke's bride, Isolde laments:

Unloved, always
seeing near me
that splendid man!
How could I bear the torment?

During the tense and cryptic dialogue between Isolde and Tristan that follows, she says:

Sickly and feeble,
in my power,
why did I not strike you down then?
You know well why that was so.
I nursed your wounds
so that, restored to strength,
you would be slain in vengeance...

This is clearly a lie, which she knows Tristan will understand but will be unable to respond to. The truth - that the look which passed between them was the moment when love was born - is implied in the line, "You know well why that was so." This is also our first indication that the knowledge of what happened in that look was mutual. Tristan's feelings have until now not been clear to us; he has upheld fastidiously his social role, fulfilled his obligation to his king, and maintained his formal aloofness. But now, responding to Isolde's talk of vengeance, he offers her his sword. She scorns the gesture and suggests instead a drink of "reconciliation." He knows exactly what this means, and they both know that there is no other way out of their impossible situation.

It's the tension between the inner motivations of the lovers and their speech and behavior, between what is said and not said, between appearances and reality, between the oppressive customs and proprieties of the "day" world and the suppressed longing for the "wondrous real of night," which gives the first act of _Tristan_ its dramatic brilliance and power, and allows us to understand the drinking of the potion as, not the magical agent of transformation it is in the old legend, but a psychologically truthful symbol of crisis, confession and release.

Wagner was a modern artist, not a mere spinner of fairy tales, always searching for the inner meaning of his symbols, for what they could tell us about human nature and the contents, conscious and (especially) subconscious, of the mind. He was clear about this in his writings, but above all in his musical method - in that ceaseless, mutating stream of interweaving leitmotivs, that "stream of consciousness" which tells us again and again what even the characters onstage do not know.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Have another look at the text, and listen to the music. Isolde hears the young sailor repeat his lonely song about the Irish girl he left behind:
> 
> Freshly the wind blows
> towards home:
> ...


Yes as I said, it's not in the text. It's an assumption read into it. Even the characters on the stage don't know it!


----------



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

…..Post deleted.....


----------



## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

Pure Fool said:


> You won't want to see that movie more than once. It's low budget shows every step of the way. The acting is second rate. Oh, and I love that one of the bad guys is named Wicktred. *You are right, though, that it does clarify the story*.


*Some things you find out by watching movie that make Act 1 of opera make much more sense, the opera libretto just provides bits and pieces of backstory:*

- Marke is Tristans uncle and raised him like a son since his parents were both killed during a hostile raid when he was a boy

- Kurwenal is far more than just a servant, he and Tristan grew up together and were best friends thus explaining his extreme devotion to Tristan

- Tristans parents were killed by Morold who was to be Isolde's future husband by arrangement, so his death at the hands of Tristan completes an early act of vengence

- Isolde found a wounded stranger known as Tantris (actually Tristan) and decided to protect him and secretly used her powers to slowly nurse him back to health, when his true identity as enemy of her people and killer of Morold was known she could not bring herself to harm him as she had slowly fallen in love with him during his recovery.....

- They both sadly depart and Tristan was allowed to sail home with the promise they would not see each other again and return to their former lives.

This is where wagners opera Tristan begins so you can understand the actual dynamics already in place between characters in Act 1, Isolde is furious with Tristan for breaking their final promise and forgetting her acts of kindness to him that saved his life, instead helping to ship her off to an arranged marriage against her will, and ignoring their love for each other........

With this backstory in hand all of Act 1 now makes perfect sense


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Yes as I said, it's not in the text. It's an assumption read into it. Even the characters on the stage don't know it!


You have got to be kidding.

I just went to the trouble of showing how both text and music tell us unmistakably that Isolde is in love with Tristan. I quoted the relevant text, and indicated how the music relates specifically to said text.

What part of my exposition did you not understand? What is it that you think "even the characters on the stage don't know?"


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> You have got to be kidding.
> 
> I just went to the trouble of showing how both text and music tell us unmistakably that Isolde is in love with Tristan. I quoted the relevant text, and indicated how the music relates specifically to said text.
> 
> What part of my exposition did you not understand? What is it that you think "even the characters on the stage don't know?"


Your own words: 'which tells us again and again what even the characters onstage do not know.'

Glad you agree with me!


----------



## Byron (Mar 11, 2017)

DavidA said:


> Your own words: 'which tells us again and again what even the characters onstage do not know.'
> 
> Glad you agree with me!


You're simply wrong on this one. I believe Woodduck was speaking in general in that last sentence, as an observation on Wagner's dramatic technique. The fact that you think it undermines the entirety of his post only means you didn't grasp it. Just because neither one of them state it _explicitly_ in act 1 before they take the love potion doesn't mean that it's not in the text. There is plenty of evidence in the text, and plenty of references to it both in the text and in the music. There are even more examples than the ones that Woodduck provides. Take this exchange in act 2:



> ISOLDE
> Was she not yours,
> she that chose you?
> What lies did evil Day
> ...


Isolde is asking Tristan why he betrayed his love to her, and Tristan is saying he could not bring himself to admit his love for her before and instead convinced himself to put his honor and reputation ahead of his feelings and set about winning Isolde as a bride for Marke, despite the pain it caused him. _This exchange would make no sense if the characters weren't already in love._


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Byron said:


> You're simply wrong on this one. I believe *Woodduck was speaking in general in that last sentence, as an observation on Wagner's dramatic technique. The fact that you think it undermines the entirety of his post only means you didn't grasp it.* Just because neither one of them state it _explicitly_ in act 1 before they take the love potion doesn't mean that it's not in the text. There is plenty of evidence in the text, and plenty of references to it both in the text and in the music. *There are even more examples than the ones that Woodduck provides.* Take this exchange in act 2:
> 
> [....................]
> 
> Isolde is asking Tristan why he betrayed his love to her, and Tristan is saying he could not bring himself to admit his love for her before and instead convinced himself to put his honor and reputation ahead of his feelings and set about winning Isolde as a bride for Marke, despite the pain it caused him. _*This exchange would make no sense if the characters weren't already in love.*_


Thanks for that bit of further research, and for sparing me the odious (and probably hopeless) task of making a response.

I first got to know the opera in my teens, and I have to say that I caught immediately Wagner's clear indications, textual and musical, that T & I's love was born in the glance that passed between them in Ireland. Nothing subsequent to that moment can be properly understood if we don't grasp this.

It should be said that Wagner's text in act two is terribly dense in places, but it serves mainly as a basis for musical development rather than plot exposition. The events in question are revealed mainly in the first act.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Byron said:


> You're simply wrong on this one. I believe Woodduck was speaking in general in that last sentence, as an observation on Wagner's dramatic technique. The fact that you think it undermines the entirety of his post only means you didn't grasp it. Just because neither one of them state it _explicitly_ in act 1 before they take the love potion doesn't mean that it's not in the text. There is plenty of evidence in the text, and plenty of references to it both in the text and in the music. There are even more examples than the ones that Woodduck provides. Take this exchange in act 2:
> 
> Isolde is asking Tristan why he betrayed his love to her, and Tristan is saying he could not bring himself to admit his love for her before and instead convinced himself to put his honor and reputation ahead of his feelings and set about winning Isolde as a bride for Marke, despite the pain it caused him. _This exchange would make no sense if the characters weren't already in love._


Yes but they are under the effects of a love potion now. That actually changes everything and makes them believe they were in love before. Don't forget that in fairy tales love potions can do strange things! There is no indication of love in the text before the potion has been drunk unless you read it in. The problem I find is when people seem to feel the love potion has little or no effect and that does not appear what Wagner had in mind. In any case the matter is not worth arguing over. They fall in love!


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Thanks for that bit of further research, and for sparing me the odious (and probably hopeless) task of making a response.
> 
> I first got to know the opera in my teens, and I have to say that *I caught immediately Wagner's clear indications,* textual and musical, that T & I's love was born in the glance that passed between them in Ireland. Nothing subsequent to that moment can be properly understood if we don't grasp this.
> 
> It should be said that Wagner's text in act two is terribly dense in places, but it serves mainly as a basis for musical development rather than plot exposition. The events in question are revealed mainly in the first act.


You needn't bother with your 'odious task' as I do know it is the view people have taken. Thomas Mann's remark that it might as well have been water reflects this view that the potion is merely a mechanism for allowing the lovers to realise their love. That being so, what Wagner describes in the opera is the effects of love, not the effects of a drug. Whether of course that was actual Wagner's intention remains a matter of debate as I don't believe he actually commented on the matter himself.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Yes but *they are under the effects of a love potion* now. That actually changes everything and *makes them believe they were in love before.* Don't forget that *in fairy tales love potions can do strange things!* There is no indication of love in the text before the potion has been drunk unless you read it in. *The problem I find is when people seem to feel the love potion has little or no effect *and that does not appear what Wagner had in mind. *In any case the matter is not worth arguing over. *They fall in love!


OK, let's go through it again.

Tristan and Isolde knew perfectly well that they were in love before drinking the potion. Isolde tells us that she is in love explicitly in the portions of dialogue from Act 1 which I quoted. Why are you continuing to insist that "there is no indication of love in the text before the potion has been drunk" when the confirmatory texts have been set right in front of you and people keep reminding you to read them? I am certain that you can read, even if the poignant, romantic longing in the music that accompanies Isolde's words of confession doesn't reinforce for you what the words say. That music is taken from the prelude, and Wagner has in fact left us commentary on it, telling us clearly of the "love glance" embodied in the opening motifs, the glance exchanged by the pair when their eyes met in Tristan's sickroom and Isolde let fall the sword.

As for the potion: we have no idea what herbal concoction the desperate lovers may have drunk, or what physical or psychotropic effect it may have had. But in fact it doesn't matter at all how we want to imagine it. That's simply irrelevant to an understanding of the story. Something you are consistently unwillingly to give Wagner credit for is his ability to transform myth and romance into perceptive psychological drama. This was in fact his stated goal. He isn't writing a fairy tale here. His stories are not magical fantasies for children. His symbols have psychological meaning, often layers of meaning. If you don't know that, you're missing a fundamental thing about his work and thought. But it's obvious that you don't want to learn anything, particularly about Wagner. You just want to put in your two cents, and apparently to drive me insane.

And by the way, it isn't your prerogative to decide what matters are worth arguing over. If you are going to come here, make uninformed remarks about a subject that some of us understand very well, and refuse to concede that anyone knows anything you don't even when it's set before you in concrete detail, you are going to get an argument.


----------



## Morton (Nov 13, 2016)

Of course they fall in love in Ireland, apart from anything in the text, just listen to the music when Isolde describes Tristan looking into her eyes as she is about to kill him.
Of course she curses him later in her narration, after all the man she loves is taking her to Cornwall to marry his uncle!
The only effect the ‘love potion’ needs to have is to make them think they are about to die and so release them from all inhibitions.


----------



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

^^^^It's obvious to people of good will.


----------



## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

I'll be happy to entertain DavidA's theory, once he explains how it can reconciled with the passages Woodduck quoted earlier. So far, though, he hasn't taken on that task. So I guess for the time being I'm stuck in my more conventional view.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> OK, let's go through it again.
> 
> Tristan and Isolde knew perfectly well that they were in love before drinking the potion. Isolde tells us that she is in love explicitly in the portions of dialogue from Act 1 which I quoted. Why are you continuing to insist that "there is no indication of love in the text before the potion has been drunk" when the confirmatory texts have been set right in front of you and people keep reminding you to read them? I am certain that you can read, even if the poignant, romantic longing in the music that accompanies Isolde's words of confession doesn't reinforce for you what the words say. That music is taken from the prelude, and Wagner has in fact left us commentary on it, telling us clearly of the "love glance" embodied in the opening motifs, the glance exchanged by the pair when their eyes met in Tristan's sickroom and Isolde let fall the sword.
> 
> ...


You might think it worth arguing over but frankly I've got better things to do with my time than argue over a piece of fiction. It makes no difference to my life whatever. It might not be my prerogative what you choose to argue about but it is mine to decide what I argue about!


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Deleted......................


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Unbelievable! Or perhaps too predictable?

N.


----------



## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

DavidA said:


> You might think it worth arguing over but frankly I've got better things to do with my time than argue over a piece of fiction. It makes no difference to my life whatever. It might not be my prerogative what you choose to argue about but it is mine to decide what I argue about!


So does this mean you're *not* going to defend your view against the specific passages Woodduck cited?

Oh well. How 'bout those Red Sox?


----------



## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

I for one am greatly enjoying reading adult human beings arguing about the possibility of the existence of subtext.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> You might think it worth arguing over but frankly I've got better things to do with my time than argue over a piece of fiction. It makes no difference to my life whatever. It might not be my prerogative what you choose to argue about but it is mine to decide what I argue about!


If this argument isn't worth your time then why did you initiate it, and why are you still arguing? To have the last word?

The last word on any subject rightfully goes to those who know what they're talking about. In this case that appears to be everyone who has read the libretto of _Tristan und Isolde_ and actually knows what's in it. This is not a "by invitation only" club, so the door is open to anyone who wants to put in the time. But I guess we can't expect you to do that; you've so often denigrated Wagner's libretti and aired your lack of sympathy with his plots and characters (especially to people who do have sympathy with them) that it's hardly shocking that you know so little about them. The only thing that continues to have us scratching our heads is why you would resist to the bloody end a simple factual correction supported by direct references to lines of dialogue. Heck, nobody's asking you to read the whole thing or to like it. You need only read those specific lines, understand what they mean, and say something like, "Oh. Yeah. I hadn't noticed that."

I really don't know what it takes to start an argument over an easily verifiable fact that admits of no argument, keep arguing when all the evidence is arrayed against you, and then claim it isn't worth arguing about. I guess I'll just have to wait till Erda the green-faced torso pops up out of the ground, booms "Weiche, Woodduck, weiche!", and explains to me the mysteries of life.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

howlingfantods said:


> I for one am greatly enjoying reading adult human beings arguing about the possibility of the existence of subtext.


Hahaha. The heck with subtext. In this case the argument seems to be over the existence of text itself, which seems to be invisible to some people even when cut, pasted, explained, and then cut, pasted and explained again. I know of no literary theory that can account for this method of exegesis.


----------



## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Now look what you've done Itullian, you've made DavidA and Woodduck argue! How could you? :lol:


----------



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

From the synopsis included in the Orfeo '52 Karajan Tristan set:

"In the war between Ireland and Cornwall (which is obliged to pay taxes to Ireland) Tristan, the nephew of King Marke, kills Morold, the bridegroom of the Irish Princess Isolde. He is severely wounded in doing so. Only Isolde, who knows how to use magic potions, can save him.
This is why Tristan is on his way to Ireland, under the false name of Tantris. Isolde heals his wound, although recognizing him as her deadly enemy. 
*One glance in his eyes and she falls passionately in love. Tristan reciprocates her love, but then returns to King Marke's fortress,* in Cornwall nonetheless.
After the reconciliation between both countries has been sealed, Tristan comes to Ireland, this time as a suitor, in order to bring Isolde to Cornwall to be King Marke's wife.

Skip to last act synopsis:
"Kurwenal kills Melot, and in so doing becomes himself mortally wounded. Marke, for whom Brangane has discovered the secret of the love potion, (he now wanted to unite the lovers himself) is now staggered and remains where he is.
*In the Liebestod und Verklarung,( Love death and transfiguration), Isolde follows Tristan into another world.*

I think that covers it, AGAIN.


----------



## Granate (Jun 25, 2016)

Itullian said:


> Skip to last act synopsis:
> *Kurwenal kills Melot, and in so doing becomes himself mortally wounded.* Marke, for whom Brangane has discovered the secret of the love potion, (he now wanted to unite the lovers himself) is now staggered and remains where he is.












That's not how I remembered it. Didn't Melot get the rank he craved for exposing Tristan's affair? I supposed he succeeded.

Oh no please not the transfiguration rant again.


----------



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Granate said:


> That's not how I remembered it. Didn't Melot get the rank he craved for exposing Tristan's affair? I supposed he succeeded.
> 
> Oh no please not the transfiguration rant again.


Rant? That's what it says bud.


----------



## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

^^^^ Yes yes yes they were without doubt in love prior to drinking the potion on ship voyage back to Cornwall, all makes sense once this is understood

Notice at final scence that Marke once finds out the full story (from Brangane) was devastated and would have given his blessing to their relationship, this is more fully understood with complete backstory of how Marke raised Tristan as a son once his parents were killed during hostile raid by Morold, another element of tragedy that shows the elusive nature of happiness in the "daylight" mortal world...........


----------



## Granate (Jun 25, 2016)

Itullian said:


> Rant? That's what it says bud.


Harp sound to travel to 2015...



AC Douglas said:


> You say "Not to be too literal about it" and then go all clinical on me. That simply will not do. This is Wagner cum Schopenhauer, not _Grey's Anatomy_.
> 
> Isolde undergoes a Verklärung the nature of which permits her to all by herself become one consciousness, both Tristan and Isolde residing in the realm of Night. The music tells us that. What happens in the realm of Day thereafter is not our (or Wagner's) concern. Alice doesn't live there anymore.
> 
> ...





Woodduck said:


> The meanings of "death" and "transfiguration" are anything but clear in your explanations.
> 
> Tristan has died in a suicidal frenzy, without benefit of any "transfiguration." So he can't have gone to any "realm of Night," unless the realm of Night is simply oblivion (which is in fact the way he describes it to Kurwenal - _Urvergessen_, complete forgetting). But sheer oblivion would just be ordinary death, in which case Isolde's only way of "uniting" with him would be to die as well. If Isolde does not die, how is it that she becomes "one consciousness" with Tristan who, being stone cold dead, has no consciousness to become "one" with? You could posit that death is not "complete forgetting", and that Tristan has somehow, despite his physical death, retained some sort of consciousness capable of uniting with Isolde's. But then why not have Isolde too die, and follow Tristan's path into the realm of Night? The metaphysics of this are certainly unclear, and having Isolde remain alive seems inconsistent with any explanation.
> 
> ...


and it goes on and on...


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DarkAngel said:


> ^^^^ Yes yes yes they were without doubt in love prior to drinking the potion on ship voyage back to Cornwall, all makes sense once this is understood
> 
> Notice at final scence that Marke once finding out the full story (from Brangane) was devastated and would have given his blessing to their relationship, this is more fully understood with complete backstory of how Marke raised Tristan as a son once his parents were killed during hostile raid by Morold, another element of tragedy that shows the elusive nature of happiness in the mortal world...........


It's been asked why Brangaene didn't reveal her substitution of the love potion before Tristan left Cornwall, but I can imagine her being quite traumatized by the course of events and paralyzed by fear and guilt, thinking herself the sole cause of the trouble. She seems never to have understood Isolde's remarks revealing the origin of her love for Tristan, and thus she would have seen her own disobedience as the cause of the entire situation and herself as ultimately responsible for the betrayal of Marke. People did believe in magic potions then - Isolde's mother was a "wise woman" or physician, practitioner of the herbal arts - so blaming the drink was a reasonable way of sparing the lovers from having to confess the real nature of their passion. Knowing the truth and Brangaene's lack of comprehension, Isolde would have forgiven her faithful handmaid for disobeying her mistress out of love, and undoubtedly would have thought it better not to tell Marke the whole story in order to spare both him and herself.

Of course we don't really have to know any of these details. Wagner was typically economical in his storytelling, reducing the action to key events and keeping background information to a necessary minimum. Not much happens onstage in _Tristan,_ yet a great deal happens in the music, where a tale of tragic passion is related in exhaustive emotional detail. I don't think any work of theater is comparable to it in that respect; in the proportion of outward to inward action, it's fundamentally a psychological narrative and is virtually in a genre by itself.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Granate said:


> Harp sound to travel to 2015...
> 
> and it goes on and on...


Thanks for reposting that from a few years ago. _Tristan_ is such a deep and amazing work, and so much can be said about it.

AC Douglas was quite the stubborn bugger, determined to convince us all that Wagner didn't intend for Isolde to die. I'm not sure why he eventually gave up, but he was clearly outnumbered.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Barbebleu said:


> Now look what you've done Itullian, you've made DavidA and Woodduck argue! How could you? :lol:


You don't have to make DavidA argue. You need only say something positive about Wagner.


----------



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Thanks for reposting that from a few years ago. _Tristan_ is such a deep and amazing work, and so much can be said about it.
> 
> AC Douglas was quite the stubborn bugger, determined to convince us all that Wagner didn't intend for Isolde to die. I'm not sure why he eventually gave up, but he was clearly outnumbered.


I don't think anyone says she didn't die. You have to die to enter another world.
Just that death isn't the end. And love conquers all.
Remember the legend goes that they are buried side by side and a vine grows from each grave, entwining together symbolizing that they are together.
Very similar to the end of Dutchman.
Senta dies. But she is seen together with the Dutchman, together, rising to heaven.
A transfiguration, as Wagner called t.

BTW, I find it extremely moving either way.


----------



## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

Woodduck said:


> You don't have to make DavidA argue. You need only say something positive about Wagner.


Ah yes but his impulse to argue always seems more urgent when Duck is making the positive Wagner comments, heh heh......


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Itullian said:


> I don't think anyone says she didn't die. You have to die to enter another world.
> Just that death isn't the end. And love conquers all.
> Remember the legend goes that they are buried side by side and a vine grows from each grave, entwining together symbolizing that they are together.
> Very similar to the end of Dutchman.
> ...


In fact, AC argued quite strenuously that she doesn't die. Inconveniently for him, Wagner disagrees.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

DarkAngel said:


> Ah yes but his impulse to argue always seems more urgent when Duck is making the positive Wagner comments, heh heh......


One just boggles at the evangelical zeal! Not just me either! I see others have the benefit of his wisdom. Post after post! :lol:


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> One just boggles at the evangelical zeal! Not just me either! I see others have the benefit of his wisdom. Post after post! :lol:


Yeah, it must make your ego feel warm all over, all this attention.

I know you're here to get the last word, so what's your next shot? What else can you tell us about _Tristan_ that isn't true?


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Wagner of course derived the ideas of subjection and redemption that are apparent in Tristan und Isolde from Schopenhauer's pessimistic worldview. Human desires and actions are largely futile and destined to lead to suffering. Only by sublimating our will can we achieve peace. Hence the Liebestod at the end of Tristan, with its renunciation of earthly love and striving for something more transcendent. Not a view I accept as I believe that lasting love and joy can be found here on earth! But it is a view that underpins a deal of operatic tragedy.


----------



## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Wagner of course derived the ideas of subjection and redemption that are apparent in Tristan und Isolde from Schopenhauer's pessimistic worldview. Human desires and actions are largely futile and destined to lead to suffering. Only by sublimating our will can we achieve peace. Hence the Liebestod at the end of Tristan, with its renunciation of earthly love and striving for something more transcendent. Thankfully, unlike dear old Schopenhauer, some of us have found lasting love and joy here on earth!


I dunno. At this advanced stage of my life, Schopenhauer's ideas about the futility of human desires and actions sound pretty good.

But I think it would be sad if his views were adopted by a *young* person.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

amfortas said:


> I dunno. At this advanced stage of my life, *Schopenhauer's ideas about the futility of human desires and actions sound pretty good.*
> 
> But I think it would be sad if his views were adopted by a *young* person.


Sound pretty awful to me even though I'm into my eighth decade. Life is to be loved and enjoyed as much as we can. The company of friends and family can help lots here. Schopenhauer's pessimism is uncalled for imo - thankfully! Schopenhauer has been called 'one of the great miserabilists of history'. As an old lady I visit says, "No-one wants you when you're miserable." She's always an inspiration to me as to how she makes the most of life even at an advanced age.


----------



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Wagner of course derived the ideas of subjection and redemption that are apparent in Tristan und Isolde from Schopenhauer's pessimistic worldview. Human desires and actions are largely futile and destined to lead to suffering. Only by sublimating our will can we achieve peace. Hence the Liebestod at the end of Tristan, with its renunciation of earthly love and striving for something more transcendent. Not a view I accept as I believe that lasting love and joy can be found here on earth! But it is a view that underpins a deal of operatic tragedy.


But not in their case!
I feel Wagner's is an optimistic view, that life goes on. that this is not all.
The Dutchman and Senta live on!. 
Lohengrin restores the kidnapped King
Tannhauser is redeemed.
Parsifal restores the spear and grail.
Eva marries who she loves , Walther.
How much more life affirming and positive.
Unlike Verdi's last opera where life is a joke!!


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Itullian said:


> But not in their case!
> I feel Wagner's is an optimistic view, that life goes on. that this is not all.
> The Dutchman and Senta live on!.
> Lohengrin restores the kidnapped King
> ...


Unfortunately you have missed the point of Falstaff where the love and happiness of all shines out. The lovers are united and the family reconciled. And even Falstaff is reconciled to those he sought to cheat. The final chorus is an operatic skit - a joke in itself - before they go off for the wedding feast. It's what goes before that is important. Falstaff is a life-affirming experience. Seeing the broadcast of the Met's Tristan and Falstaff, I went out depressed from the former and elated by the latter. Perhaps that's just me. And the production of Tristan was terrible I admit while Falstaff was brilliant. 
The problem is that in Wagner no-one gets their happiness in this life apart from in Mastersingers. (Mind you, last time I saw it, my behind was dead from sitting so long!). In the rest people have to snuff it to get it. Still, I suppose one out of five isn't bad! And Verdi's 'happiness' rate is even lower! As Bugs Bunny says, "What do you expect in opera - a happy ending!" :lol:


----------



## Byron (Mar 11, 2017)

I find the message of Tristan and Isolde to be inspiring. Love has the capacity to make life meaningful. These characters have the uncompromising commitment to love, and the fact that they are willing to go all the way, to negate even their own bodies for that love is what makes it powerful.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Certainly there was an infusion of Schopenhauer's pessimism into Wagner's thinking not long before he composed _Tristan,_ but it's easy to exaggerate the philosopher's influence upon it. The story existed prior to Wagner's adaptation of it, it had always been a tragic romance (of which there are plenty in world literature and opera), and he was quite faithful to its basic outlines. Even on the most superficial level, the plight of the lovers in their rigid society was a comprehensible one, and the work is realistic in tracing the conflicting, ecstatic and painful emotions they experience.

Human beings invest sexual love with great expectations, with the hope of achieving a happiness that will transcend and ease the often difficult conditions of life in the world. But the fulfillment of earthly love is by definition not available in tragic romances (no more for Romeo and Juliet than for Tristan and Isolde). The love night in the castle garden was not an act of "sublimation" but a glorious dream of what could never be, an illusion of "all-forgetting" and eternal union to be savored before harsh reality inevitably returned. Tristan and Isolde's talk of night and death is neither Schopenhauerian pessimism nor a literal death-wish, but rather a desperate vision of life in a magical place safe from the searchlights of the "day" world's meaningless expectations. Tristan's death in her arms inevitably takes Isolde back to their dream in the garden (as the music tells us), and love and death become one for her in a shining vision of union with Tristan and of their absorption into the "world-breath," the only fulfillment possible and an affirmation that love is all that matters in the end.

Schopenhauer would not have recognized this denouement as an expression of his philosophy. There is more of his authentic thought in the operas that followed _Tristan,_ particularly in that sensitive portrait of moderation, Hans Sachs, and in the evolution of the character of Wotan. And of course there's Parsifal - Schopenhauer meets Siegfried meets Siddhartha meets Jesus meets Freud and Jung - but I'll desist from plunging into the complexities of that!


----------



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

^^^^That's what makes Wagner so great, (not to mention the amazing music)!!
His characters are multi dimensional. They are complex creatures like us.
One is not all good or all bad, but a complex amalgam.
They evolve, they change, they grow, they wrestle with situations.
That's what makes a great novelist!


----------



## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

^^^^ Duck is in the zone (again), nice insights into the social themes and cultural context Tristan operates in as well wagner's masterful use of music motifs to tell a rich deeper story words often fail adequately convey......all done with almost poetic beauty of story telling by Duck, a most worthy and valued advocate of R. Wagner 

Makes you want to listen to some more wagner right now


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

DarkAngel said:


> ^^^^ Duck is in the zone (again), nice insights into the social themes and cultural context Tristan operates in as well wagner's masterful use of music motifs to tell a rich deeper story words often fail adequately convey......all done with almost poetic beauty of story telling by Duck, a most worthy and valued advocate of R. Wagner
> 
> Makes you want to listen to some more wagner right now


I must confess it has the opposite effect on me. I like to enjoy music on my own terms not be told what I ought to think. Of course, I realise I am not one of the 'initiated' in this realm of Wagner devotion although I do enjoy his music on my own terms. I was listening to the prelude to Parsifal last night and was struck by the sheer beauty of the music. But then I regard music as my servant top be enjoyed on my terms without having to ascribe to what some would call the so-called 'deep' philosophical musings and meanings which I can't take. 
To quote Mark Twain writing in the Chicago Daily Tribune after attending the Bayreuth Festival in 1891, acknowledged the power of Tristan but wrote: "This opera of 'Tristan and Isolde' last night broke the hearts of all witnesses who were of the faith, and I know of some who have heard of many who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away. I feel strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the sane person in a community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and always, during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven. . . . "


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Byron said:


> I find the message of Tristan and Isolde to be inspiring. Love has the capacity to make life meaningful. These characters have the uncompromising commitment to love, and the fact that they are willing to go all the way, to negate even their own bodies for that love is what makes it powerful.


Yes but is it really love or teen infatuation? Love to me is something to be worked at rather than the frenzied affair the lovers have in the second act.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Itullian said:


> ^^^^That's what makes Wagner so great, (not to mention the amazing music)!!
> His characters are multi dimensional. They are complex creatures like us.
> One is not all good or all bad, but a complex amalgam.
> They evolve, they change, they grow, they wrestle with situations.
> That's what makes a great novelist!


Funny but they don't move me in the slightest. Mozart's characters do. I can get involved with them. Probably a matter of our different personalities and our differing takes on life in general. I know some novelists other people find wonderful I find boring and vice versa. I think it's a case of one man's meat......... 
But if you enjoy RWs characters please do enjoy!


----------



## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

DavidA said:


> I must confess it has the opposite effect on me. I like to enjoy music on my own terms not be told what I ought to think. Of course, I realise I am not one of the 'initiated' in this realm of Wagner devotion although *I do enjoy his music on my own terms. I was listening to the prelude to Parsifal last night and was struck by the sheer beauty of the music*. But then I regard music as my servant top be enjoyed on my terms without having to ascribe to what some would call the so-called 'deep' philosophical musings and meanings which I can't take.


Yes one can easily take wagners music in isolation and appreciate the abstract beauty of the sounds as in any purely orchestral work, but the unique thing about opera is that the composer writes music to tell a story and evoke certain emotions, to enhance the action taking place on stage.....

For many operas the story and music are very straightforward and direct in their message, and some composer's work benefits by knowing the social context of the time and the religious/philosophical thinking the composer embraces since they can imply deeper more abstract themes the composer is presenting us.......for each person to evaluate from their own perspective

Later wagner operas are like an onion with many layers you can peel back if you wish to dig deeper, there is no "correct" way to view them, Duck often gives readers valuable food for thought as to what kind of ideas are being explored, for instance how does one understand the transfiguration of Isolde.....these concepts lie beyond the written libretto

So wagners music artistry can be enjoyed on many levels, it can be rewarding and fun to explore


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

DarkAngel said:


> Yes one can easily take wagners music in isolation and appreciate the abstract beauty of the sounds as in any purely orchestral work, but the unique thing about opera is that the composer writes music to tell a story and evoke certain emotions, to enhance the action taking place on stage.....
> 
> For many operas the story and music are very straightforward and direct in their message, and some composer's work benefits by knowing the social context of the time and the religious/philosophical themes the composer embraces since they can imply deeper more abstract themes the composer is presenting us.......for each person to evaluate from their own perspective
> 
> ...


I am not at all against being given food for thought. I resist when people tell me this is how I should think, especially about things which 'lie beyond the written libretto' and which are therefore a matter of opinion. Don't worry, I do a lot of reading around and as a historian am very interested in the social context of the works. Just that I believe people can agree to differ in their interpretation.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Yes but is it really love or teen infatuation? Love to me is something to be worked at rather than the frenzied affair the lovers have in the second act.


I see from these several posts that you're still taking your self-appointed role of debunker very seriously. Has it ever occurred to you to write a book entitled, "What I Don't Like or Understand About Wagner, and Why People Who Do Like Wagner Need to Hear From Me"? Perhaps the exercise of writing a book would get the bee out of your bonnet once and for all, and then you'd have more free time to devote to things you really care about. Just a thought.

But I digress...

You ask, "Is it really love or teen infatuation?" Well, it must have occurred to you that the word "love" has a number of meanings. Have you ever read C. S. Lewis's "The Four Loves" (in which, being a Wagner enthusiast, he even mentions _Tristan und Isolde_ in his discussion of erotic love)? As Lewis points out, and as I think we all realize anyway, there is no single thing called "real" love, and in the realm of sexual love not everything is equally "real." What you're calling "teen infatuation" is far from all there is to it.

Relationships do require effort over time, but people don't come together, or stay together, out of a desire to "work" at something, but because they find something in each other that promises to make the work of building a relationship worthwhile. Nobody is going to want to work at a relationship if there isn't an affinity at the root of it, and affinity is not necessarily mere physical attraction or fantasy but can, if it's based on deep-seated aspects of people's personalities and character, sustain a relationship for years or even a lifetime. Sometimes people really are "made for each other."

It wasn't Wagner's objective in _Tristan_ (and it isn't the objective of opera in general, for obvious reasons) to analyze the personal traits in his pair of lovers which might account for their being in love. We are simply asked, quite reasonably, to accept that their love is indicative of a powerful affinity, and to believe them when they say, like many another pair of tragic lovers who defy a hostile world, that it was their "fate." I should think that Wagner's profound score, at least, might make the seriousness of their love easy to accept. His musical depiction of love explores so many dimensions beyond what you call their "frenzied affair" that I have to wonder whether you've ever really listened to it.

To be frank, your suggestion that a love willing to endure everything life and death can bring might really be nothing but "teen infatuation" comes across as not very credible, rather cynical and cranky, and probably just more debunking.


----------



## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

> It wasn't Wagner's objective in _Tristan (and it isn't the objective of opera in general, for obvious reasons) to analyze the personal traits in his pair of lovers which might account for their being in love. We are simply asked, quite reasonably, to accept that their love is indicative of a powerful affinity, and to believe them when they say, like many another pair of tragic lovers who defy a hostile world, that it was their "fate." I should think that Wagner's profound score, at least, might make the seriousness of their love easy to accept. His musical depiction of love explores so many dimensions beyond what you call their "frenzied affair" that I have to wonder whether you've ever really listened to it._


Indeed once the lovers have surrendered any hesitation or pretense in Act 2 night garden, RW is exploring not just romantic love and physical attraction but love as a means/portal to elevate and glimpse an etherial peaceful dream world where self doubt and fear are gone and a higher state of mind exists.......with the liebestod motif introduced. RW has moved beyond any physical mortal boundries for love

Later to conclude opera Isolde recalls this state of etherial being from act 2, then in transfiguration sings the final aria with the last notes answering the question posed by the Tristan chord.........


----------



## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

DarkAngel said:


> Indeed once the lovers have surrendered any hesitation or pretense in Act 2 night garden, RW is exploring not just romantic love and physical attraction but love as a means/portal to elevate and glimpse an etherial peaceful dream world where self doubt and fear are gone and a higher state of mind exists.......with the liebestod motif introduced. RW has moved beyond any physical mortal boundries for love.


Which is why, much as I love Wagner, I've always been ambivalent about the love of Tristan and Isolde. It seems to exist on an unworldly, transcendent plane of experience foreign to anything I've ever known, so that during the great Act II duet I can't help feeling somewhat excluded.

Of course, this could just be "me" thing. Wouldn't be the first time.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

amfortas said:


> Which is why, much as I love Wagner, I've always been ambivalent about the love of Tristan and Isolde. *It seems to exist on an unworldly, transcendent plane of experience foreign to anything I've ever known*, so that during the great Act II duet I can't help feeling somewhat excluded.
> 
> Of course, this could just be "me" thing. Wouldn't be the first time.


You're quite right. But then this is opera not reality. Why I don't take opera (whatever composer) as a serious reflection of life or reality. In reality people don't sing they speak. When opera does try to do mimic reality the results are usually glum!


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

amfortas said:


> Which is why, much as I love Wagner, I've always been ambivalent about the love of Tristan and Isolde. It seems to exist on an unworldly, transcendent plane of experience foreign to anything I've ever known, so that during the great Act II duet I can't help feeling somewhat excluded.
> 
> Of course, this could just be "me" thing. Wouldn't be the first time.


I think most people feel ambivalent about _Tristan,_ and rightly so. In real life, moments of intense passion and transcendence are just moments, and thank goodness they are! But humans are always at war with finitude and transience: we want foreverness, we imagine eternal bliss, we turn to art and religion and love to lift us beyond ourselves. Wagner, a hyperintense young man if ever there was one, wanted to see if he could realize in art the impossible dream of saints and lovers. He wrote to Liszt: "Never in my life having enjoyed the true happiness of love, I shall erect a memorial to this most beautiful of all dreams in which, from the first to the last, love shall, for once, find complete fulfillment." But of course such an all-consuming, all-transforming love is an impossibility in this finite world, and "Le Roman de Tristan et Iseult" was and always had to be a tragedy.

I see _Tristan_ as a monument, not to love simply, but to the paradox of love as a vessel for man's yearning for divinity. Wagner was absolutely spot-on in making the lovers in the garden, and Isolde in dying, sing a hymn: "So starben wir nun ungetrennt"... "Mild und leise wie er lachelt." Isolde dies, not merely because passion is subversive and incurs the wrath of the social order, but because it tries to reach beyond life itself and can break the frail human vessel that contains it. This is not abnormal or inhuman; indeed, of all creatures only man can experience it. But fortunately for most of us, common sense intervenes before we cross over into the "wondrous realm of night"; the "day world" may be hell to deal with, but we have to live in it. A work like _Tristan_ (but is there anything "like" _Tristan?_) leaves us in awe, but grateful to have survived to go back to hearth and home, when the curtain falls.

Wagner, too, was glad to bring down the curtain on _Tristan._ Hans Sachs, contemplating man's tragic illusions, understood both the beauty and the danger of romantic dreams. Wagner himself, of course, married and had a family (though not necessarily in that order!).


----------



## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

^^^^Amazing insights Woodduck. thanks


----------



## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

DavidA said:


> You're quite right. But then this is opera not reality. Why I don't take opera (whatever composer) as a serious reflection of life or reality. In reality people don't sing they speak. When opera does try to do mimic reality the results are usually glum!


People don't speak blank verse, either, but somehow audiences and readers seem to have taken Shakespeare seriously.

Great art has always employed heightened, stylized media--verse, song, dance--while still managing to reflect the human condition. I think it would be a terrible impoverishment to believe we could see aspects of ourselves only in photographic realism.


----------



## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> I think most people feel ambivalent about _Tristan,_ and rightly so. In real life, moments of intense passion and transcendence are just moments, and thank goodness they are! But humans are always at war with finitude and transience: we want foreverness, we imagine eternal bliss, we turn to art and religion and love to lift us beyond ourselves. Wagner, a hyperintense young man if ever there was one, wanted to see if he could realize in art the impossible dream of saints and lovers. He wrote to Liszt: "Never in my life having enjoyed the true happiness of love, I shall erect a memorial to this most beautiful of all dreams in which, from the first to the last, love shall, for once, find complete fulfillment." But of course such an all-consuming, all-transforming love is an impossibility in this finite world, and "Le Roman de Tristan et Iseult" was and always had to be a tragedy.
> 
> I see _Tristan_ as a monument, not to love simply, but to the paradox of love as a vessel for man's yearning for divinity. Wagner was absolutely spot-on in making the lovers in the garden, and Isolde in dying, sing a hymn: "So starben wir nun ungetrennt"... "Mild und leise wie er lachelt." Isolde dies, not merely because passion is subversive and incurs the wrath of the social order, but because it tries to reach beyond life itself and can break the frail human vessel that contains it. This is not abnormal or inhuman; indeed, of all creatures only man can experience it. But fortunately for most of us, common sense intervenes before we cross over into the "wondrous realm of night"; the "day world" may be hell to deal with, but we have to live in it. A work like _Tristan_ (but is there anything "like" _Tristan?_) leaves us in awe, but grateful to have survived, when the curtain falls.
> 
> Wagner, too, was glad to bring down the curtain on _Tristan._ Hans Sachs, contemplating man's tragic illusions, understood both the beauty and the danger of romantic dreams. Wagner himself, of course, married and had a family (though not necessarily in that order!).


Wonderful post. It will work perfectly, without revision, as the introduction to the latest novel I'm writing.

I may even credit you.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

amfortas said:


> Wonderful post. It will work perfectly, without revision, as the introduction to the latest novel I'm writing.
> 
> I may even credit you.


No credit necessary. Just send money.


----------



## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> No credit necessary. Just send money.


I believe I have.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

amfortas said:


> I believe I have.


Deduct it from the royalties.


----------



## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Act II of Tristan is one long drawn out orgasm. I'm sorry for all those who can't empathise with the intense passion being depicted in the music of this act.

N.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

The Conte said:


> Act II of Tristan is one long drawn out orgasm. I'm sorry for all those who can't empathise with the intense passion being depicted in the music of this act.
> 
> N.


Tristan has actually been described as 'opera's most famous moment of coitus interruptus.'. 
If you want to hear an orgasm in music drama go to Shostakovich's 'Kady Macbeth'. Instead of resolving the musical tensions, as any previous composer would have done, Wagner keeps the music in a heightened state of limbo by continually avoiding answering the harmonic questions it asks, and he sustains that sense of febrile ambiguity throughout all three acts of the drama right until the very end of the piece. So (unless I've missed something) the 'musical orgasm' never actually comes and the lovers' situation is resolved only in death at the end where it is hoped they souls will intertwine somehow. Which of course gives people who don't believe in life after death somewhat of a problem, I would imagine!
It is of course reckoned by many that Tristan was inspired by an earlier love triangle in which Wagner conceived an illicit passion for Mathilde Wesendonck, wife of one of his patrons, Otto Wesendonck, in Zürich in 1854. This affair was - like Tristan on stage - almost certainly unconsummated, which prompted Wagner's own searching for the musical and dramatic expression of that love. Interesting just how much of the music's heightened state of limbo may have been inspired by Wagner's own passion for the unattainable is interesting.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Tristan has actually been described as 'opera's most famous moment of coitus interruptus.'.
> If you want to hear an orgasm in music drama go to Shostakovich's 'Kady Macbeth'. Instead of resolving the musical tensions, as any previous composer would have done, Wagner keeps the music in a heightened state of limbo by continually avoiding answering the harmonic questions it asks, and he sustains that sense of febrile ambiguity throughout all three acts of the drama right until the very end of the piece. So (unless I've missed something) the 'musical orgasm' never actually comes and the lovers' situation is resolved only in death at the end where it is hoped they souls will intertwine somehow. Which of course gives people who don't believe in life after death somewhat of a problem, I would imagine!
> It is of course reckoned by many that Tristan was inspired by an earlier love triangle in which Wagner conceived an illicit passion for Mathilde Wesendonck, wife of one of his patrons, Otto Wesendonck, in Zürich in 1854. This affair was - like Tristan on stage - almost certainly unconsummated, which prompted Wagner's own searching for the musical and dramatic expression of that love. Interesting just how much of the music's heightened state of limbo may have been inspired by Wagner's own passion for the unattainable is interesting.


"Instead of resolving the musical tensions of this chord, as any previous composer would have done, he keeps the music in a heightened state of limbo by continually avoiding answering the harmonic questions it asks, and he sustains that sense of febrile ambiguity throughout all three acts of the drama right until the very end of the piece."

"That passionate spell is broken by the rude shock of the real world when they are discovered by the cuckolded King Mark and his court, opera's most famous moment of coitus interruptus."

"It was an earlier love triangle that initially inspired the composition of Tristan. Wagner conceived an illicit passion for Mathilde Wesendonck, wife of one of his patrons, Otto Wesendonck, in Zürich in 1854. This affair - almost certainly unconsummated - prompted Wagner's own searching for the musical and dramatic expression of a love that was untrammelled by social convention, that was at once sensual and spiritual, erotic and intellectual."

(quotes from an article by Tom Service in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/dec/20/tristan-und-isolde-wagner-love)

It's bad form, and quite dishonest, to publish other people's words as one's own.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The Conte said:


> Act II of Tristan is one long drawn out orgasm. I'm sorry for all those who can't empathise with the intense passion being depicted in the music of this act.
> 
> N.


This reminds me of the comment by Nietzsche: "The world is poor for him who has never been sick enough for this voluptuousness of hell."

_Tristan_ and a close friendship with Wagner were, in conjunction with the young philosopher's classical studies, the inspiration for Nietzsche's first significant work, "The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music." We owe to that essay our familiar concepts of the Apollonian and Dionysian elements in the human spirit and in art. There's not much debate about which of those best fits _Tristan._


----------



## Guest (Aug 24, 2018)

I'm not familiar with the story, or the opera (except for the obvious bits), so finally got around to looking it up. Given the number of variations on the T and I story, I wonder which source Wagner used? There is a suggestion that in one version, they were not in love before taking the potion.

There is also the question of the extent to which Wagner wanted to take a modern perspective on the story, or wished to preserve the elements of a traditional tale of courtly love, which would need to be read rather differently by its audience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_and_Iseult

[I know it's not opera, but as an exploration of love, I'm more intrigued by Messiaen's take on the fable!]


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

amfortas said:


> People don't speak blank verse, either, but somehow audiences and readers seem to have taken Shakespeare seriously.
> 
> Great art has always employed heightened, stylized media--verse, song, dance--while still managing to reflect the human condition. *I think it would be a terrible impoverishment to believe we could see aspects of ourselves only in photographic realism.*


Oh I totally agree. I perhaps erred in using the word 'seriously'. I meant I go to the theatre for a great theatrical experience not a lesson in the philosophy of life. There are some who almost give the impression that these things are holy writ (and look down with undisguised horror at those who don't!) but I don't see them that way. Neither did Shakespeare, incidentally, as he was a man of the theatre out to entertain the masses. Being a genius he wrote some pretty profound verse as a reflection on the human condition, but that was apparently not his primary purpose. His purpose was to get people in the door of the Globe! Interestingly while one is bored stiff by Shakespeare being read to us at school one finds that actually seeing it in the theatre (well acted) can be a riveting experience, which is of course how Shakespeare intended us to approach his plays.
It does take a certain amount of life experience to see not everyone sees things your way. I was amused by Tom Service's article when he wrote: 
'I once made a big mistake with Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. As a teenager in Glasgow, I took a girl to her first opera on our very first and very last date to see Anne Evans sing Isolde at Scottish Opera. For five hours we sat there in the front row as Wagner's hymn to love, death, and almost endlessly deferred musical resolution played out in front of us. I must have thought some of Wagner's transcendent sensuality would spark a sympathetic passion in our teenage hearts. What could possibly go wrong? But while I might have experienced an overwhelming Wagnerian reverie as the score enveloped me in its uniquely perfumed sensorium, and as Anne Evans sang that music of mystic power at the end of the opera over Tristan's lifeless but gigantically tenor-sized corpse, my companion was, alas, merely baffled and catatonically bored.'
If you're going on a first date, don't choose Tristan. Star Wars maybe? :lol:


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Interesting the number of fatalities associated with Tristan. A few months after the premiere performances, the first Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, fell ill. As he died, he reportedly began to sing fragments of his character's prolonged death scene. Wagner, struck with guilt, wrote: 'My Tristan! My beloved! I drove you to the abyss.' It's unclear exactly what killed Schnorr von Carolsfeld, but the story that the opera did him in has persisted for a reason. Tristan is fixated on its characters' transcendence of their own bodies, and to express this, it places almost superhuman demands on its singers — the tenor in particular.
The stress of performing Tristan has also "claimed" the lives of conductors Felix Mottl in 1911 and Joseph Keilberth in 1968. Both men died after collapsing while conducting the second act of the opera, Motti while conducting the 100th performance of the superstition-laden Tristan und Isolde. Legend has it that he fell just as his wife, Zdenka Fassbender, was singing Isolde's 'Death-doomed head, death-doomed heart'. Joseph Keilberth, 59, died in Munich in July 1968, moments after conducting Tristan's, 'Let me die, never to awake.' 
These fatalities so alarmed Herbert von Karajan that he endowed a unit at Salzburg University to study the effects of physical stress on conducting. Other maestros exchanged macabre speculation as to whether they were more likely to die in fast or slow passages. The evidence is mixed.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

In case we get too intense, I've just seen a quote from C S Lewis (a Wagner fan) who said about love: 'We are under no obligation at all to sing all our love-duets in the throbbing, world-without-end, heart-breaking manner of Tristan and Isolde; let us often sing like Papageno and Papagena instead.' :lol:


----------



## Guest (Aug 24, 2018)

DavidA said:


> I meant I go to the theatre for a great theatrical experience not a lesson in the philosophy of life.


Over the years, I've found that my love of art, theatre, cinema, TV, literature, music (not opera) has definitely informed my outlook on life. I wouldn't be so pretentious to call it a philosophy - that's for Kant, Hume, Kierkegaard, Sartre and the rest.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> Over the years, *I've found that my love of art, theatre, cinema, TV, literature, music (not opera) has definitely informed my outlook on life*. I wouldn't be so pretentious to call it a philosophy - that's for Kant, Hume, Kierkegaard, Sartre and the rest.


Yes I agree - it's informed and enhanced my life's experience. I would add history to that too - if we learn from it!


----------



## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Interesting the number of fatalities associated with Tristan. A few months after the premiere performances, the first Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, fell ill. As he died, he reportedly began to sing fragments of his character's prolonged death scene. Wagner, struck with guilt, wrote: 'My Tristan! My beloved! I drove you to the abyss.' It's unclear exactly what killed Schnorr von Carolsfeld, but the story that the opera did him in has persisted for a reason. Tristan is fixated on its characters' transcendence of their own bodies, and to express this, it places almost superhuman demands on its singers - the tenor in particular.


"A few months after the premiere performances of Wagner's _Tristan und Isolde_, the first Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, fell ill. As he died, he reportedly began to sing fragments of his character's prolonged death scene. Wagner, struck with guilt, wrote: 'My Tristan! My beloved! I drove you to the abyss.' It's unclear exactly what killed Schnorr von Carolsfeld, but the story that the opera did him in has persisted for a reason. _Tristan_, which opens the Metropolitan Opera's season on Monday, is fixated on its characters' transcendence of their own bodies, and to express this, it places almost superhuman demands on its singers - the tenor in particular."

Micaela Baranello, New York Times, September 25, 2016

I have to agree with Woodduck: even in an internet discussion forum, it's important to credit your sources, especially when quoting directly.

We'll all sleep better.


----------



## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

amfortas said:


> "A few months after the premiere performances of Wagner's _Tristan und Isolde_, the first Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, fell ill. As he died, he reportedly began to sing fragments of his character's prolonged death scene. Wagner, struck with guilt, wrote: 'My Tristan! My beloved! I drove you to the abyss.' It's unclear exactly what killed Schnorr von Carolsfeld, but the story that the opera did him in has persisted for a reason. _Tristan_, which opens the Metropolitan Opera's season on Monday, is fixated on its characters' transcendence of their own bodies, and to express this, it places almost superhuman demands on its singers - the tenor in particular."
> 
> Micaela Baranello, New York Times, September 25, 2016
> 
> ...


Nice catch from an interesting article. Hadn't realised that there were no Tristans at the Met for sixteen years.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

amfortas said:


> "A few months after the premiere performances of Wagner's _Tristan und Isolde_, the first Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, fell ill. As he died, he reportedly began to sing fragments of his character's prolonged death scene. Wagner, struck with guilt, wrote: 'My Tristan! My beloved! I drove you to the abyss.' It's unclear exactly what killed Schnorr von Carolsfeld, but the story that the opera did him in has persisted for a reason. _Tristan_, which opens the Metropolitan Opera's season on Monday, is fixated on its characters' transcendence of their own bodies, and to express this, it places almost superhuman demands on its singers - the tenor in particular."
> 
> Micaela Baranello, New York Times, September 25, 2016
> 
> ...


Why will you sleep better? Why does it worry you? All that worries me are the facts. Was it factual? It doesn't worry me who wrote them. I think many things you read here will be cribbed from the internet sources.

I do credit the sources for my Masters degrees and do for some of the books I write when I feel it's necessary, but I didn't really feel it was necessary for this forum. But then if some of you are going to lay awake worrying about it........ :lol:

Let's get a reality check on what TC really is. An internet discussion group by music lovers not something I need my scholarship hat on for!


----------



## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Why will you sleep better? Does it worry you? All that worries me are the facts.
> 
> I credited the sources for my Masters degrees and for the books I write but I didn't really feel it was necessary for this forum, even to please Woodduck! :lol:
> 
> For goodness sake, let's get a hold on what TC really is. Am internet discussion group not a fountain of scholarship!


And you claim to be a scholar?

Fine. I'll trust others here to share their own thoughts, or acknowledge what they borrow. You, not so much. But you don't care, so it's all good.


----------



## Guest (Aug 24, 2018)

DavidA said:


> Why will you sleep better? Why does it worry you? All that worries me are the facts. Was it factual? It doesn't worry me who wrote them. I think many things you read here will be cribbed from the internet sources.
> 
> I do credit the sources for my Masters degrees and do for some of the books I write when I feel it's necessary, but I didn't really feel it was necessary for this forum. But then if some of you are going to lay awake worrying about it........ :lol:
> 
> Let's get a reality check on what TC really is. An internet discussion group by music lovers not something I need my scholarship hat on for!


It's quite simple. No "scholarship hat" is necessary, it's just a matter of honesty. This may only be the internet, and you may all be strangers, but that doesn't mean we don't owe each other some degree of courtesy.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

amfortas said:


> A*nd you claim to be a scholar?*
> 
> Fine. I'll trust others here to share their own thoughts, or acknowledge what they borrow. You, not so much. But you don't care, so it's all good.


For goodness sake, when I write something on TC I don't write as a scholar but as a music lover. I'd hate to see TC as just a domain for scholars. I see it as something where anyone who loves music can make a contribution so I make posts accordingly.

Hope you sleep well tonight btw!


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> It's quite simple. No "scholarship hat" is necessary, it's just a matter of honesty. This may only be the internet, and you may all be strangers, but that doesn't mean we don't owe each other some degree of courtesy.


Courtesy to whom? I got something off the internet which is probably quoted from another source anyway. I have been in journalism long enough to know how journalists borrow of each other. How is that discourteous to you? Have I been rude to you in doing that?


----------



## Guest (Aug 24, 2018)

DavidA said:


> Courtesy to whom? I quoted something off the internet which is probably quoted from another source anyway. How is that discourteous to you? Have I been rude to you in doing that?


IMO, it's a courtesy to the community to post honestly. But of course, we can all have different standards - I'm entitled to mine - and you can keep yours.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

MacLeod said:


> IMO, it's a courtesy to the community to post honestly. But of course, we can all have different standards - I'm entitled to mine - and you can keep yours.


That is fine. Mine is the standard of a journalist. If you read reports you will realise that journalists borrow - often from common sources - without the need of accreditation. This is not being dishonest as long as it is true.


----------



## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

DavidA said:


> For goodness sake, when I write something on TC I don't write as a scholar but as a music lover. I'd hate to see TC as just a domain for scholars. I see it as something where anyone who loves music can make a contribution so I make posts accordingly.


I could be wrong, but I suspect acknowledging sources and loving music aren't mutually exclusive.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

amfortas said:


> I could be wrong, but I suspect acknowledging sources and loving music aren't mutually exclusive.


Quite true but don't you think you're being a little picky over one paragraph? Are you really so concerned about this you'll lose sleep? Do you trawl the internet every time someone posts? Or is it just an opportunity to have a go at me?

Come on, let's just talk about what matters - the music


----------



## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Quite true but don't you think you're being a little picky over one paragraph? Are you really so concerned about this you'll lose sleep? Do you trawl the internet every time someone posts? Or is it just an opportunity to have a go at me?
> 
> Come on, let's just talk about what matters - the music


One paragraph? You've done it in multiple posts in just this one thread. Continue plagiarizing if you want, but don't play the victim when it's pointed out.


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

amfortas said:


> One paragraph? You've done it in multiple posts in just this one thread. Continue plagiarizing if you want, but don't play the victim when it's pointed out.


For goodness sake! Plagiarising? Playing the victim? Come on, you're being trivial. I've just been passing on things I read on the internet which I thought were interesting and thought might be of interesting to others. Thought that was the idea in a forum like this. Just assumed it would be obvious to intelligent people. So sorry if that offends you!


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> Quite true but don't you think you're being a little picky over one paragraph? Are you really so concerned about this you'll lose sleep? Do you trawl the internet every time someone posts? Or is it just an opportunity to have a go at me?
> 
> For goodness sake! Plagiarising? Playing the victim? Come on, you're being trivial. I've just been passing on things I read on the internet which I thought were interesting and thought might be of interesting to others. Thought that was the idea in a forum like this. Just assumed it would be obvious to intelligent people. So sorry if that offends you!


In more than four years on this forum, I haven't encountered anyone but you whose "standards" permit them to post paragraphs cribbed from other people without properly attributing them to their authors. I, and most of us, I assume, are here to offer our personal thoughts on music. It's to be expected that much of our thinking will not be original, but the tendency of our thoughts and our style of verbal expression are peculiar to us. People reading what we say are entitled to assume that we are speaking honestly for ourselves. If we fail to do that, we brand ourselves as fakes and deservedly lose the trust and respect of our readers.


----------



## howlingfantods (Jul 27, 2015)

DavidA said:


> I've just been passing on things I read on the internet which I thought were interesting [and thought would make me sound clever to pass off as my own] and thought might be of interesting to others


Fixed it for you.

Clever how you storm away against critics, who in your view are failed musicians who write because they couldn't do anything worthwhile on their own, while you simultaneously steal all your opinions and even actual words from them, while now claiming that you write internet posts from a journalistic (??) perspective.

But by all means, let's return to discussing the musical work in question with the good faith perspective that you've been elaborating in this thread, which seems to consist of the belief that anything that's not literally in the text and explicitly stated can't possible be the basis of interpretation, notwithstanding that you've never expressed this belief when it comes to literally any other work that wasn't written by Wagner.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

howlingfantods said:


> Fixed it for you.
> 
> Clever how you storm away against critics, who in your view are failed musicians who write because they couldn't do anything worthwhile on their own, while you simultaneously steal all your opinions and even actual words from them, while now claiming that you write internet posts from a journalistic (??) perspective.
> 
> But by all means, let's return to discussing the musical work in question with the good faith perspective that you've been elaborating in this thread, which seems to consist of the belief that anything that's not literally in the text and explicitly stated can't possible be the basis of interpretation, notwithstanding that you've never expressed this belief when it comes to literally any other work that wasn't written by Wagner.


Good job. I'd only suggest that you put your fix in bold. Otherwise it might be missed by a certain person who needs to read it.


----------



## Granate (Jun 25, 2016)

Illustrator is K.C. Green if you now care a lot about citing sources...


----------



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

howlingfantods said:


> Fixed it for you.
> 
> Clever how you storm away against critics, who in your view are failed musicians who write because they couldn't do anything worthwhile on their own, while you simultaneously steal all your opinions and even actual words from them, while now claiming that you write internet posts from a journalistic (??) perspective.
> 
> But by all means, let's return to discussing the musical work in question with the good faith perspective that you've been elaborating in this thread, which seems to consist of the belief that anything that's not literally in the text and explicitly stated can't possible be the basis of interpretation, notwithstanding that you've never expressed this belief when it comes to literally any other work that wasn't written by Wagner.


You really need to read what I put. You are unbelievable in the way you misinterpret people. Amazes me how you can write something like this then you talk about 'good faith'? That is a joke! :lol:


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

MacLeod said:


> I'm not familiar with the story, or the opera (except for the obvious bits), so finally got around to looking it up. Given the number of variations on the T and I story, I wonder which source Wagner used? There is a suggestion that in one version, they were not in love before taking the potion.
> 
> There is also the question of the extent to which Wagner wanted to take a modern perspective on the story, or wished to preserve the elements of a traditional tale of courtly love, which would need to be read rather differently by its audience.
> 
> ...


Wagner's main source was the 12th-century version by Gottfried von Strassburg. As far as I know, the idea of having T and I in love before drinking the potion was original with Wagner, and definitely represents a modern, more psychological, more realistic take on the story. The old tellings were full of narrative incident and assorted characters which Wagner purged in order to emphasize the aspects of the tale he considered most essential, to achieve dramatic concision and clarity, and to give freest reign to music to shape the emotional narrative. This was his approach in all his adaptations of traditional myths and romances.

I'm not familiar with a Messiaen work on this subject. What is it? There's also a sort of oratorio by Frank Martin called _Le vin herbe._


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

DavidA said:


> You really need to read what I put. You are unbelievable in the way you misinterpret people. Amazes me how you can write something like this then you talk about 'good faith'? That is a joke! :lol:


Yeah, other people are always to blame when we embarrass ourselves.


----------



## Guest (Aug 24, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> Wagner's main source was the 12th-century version by Gottfried von Strassburg. As far as I know, the idea of having T and I in love before drinking the potion was original with Wagner, and definitely represents a modern, more psychological, more realistic take on the story. The old tellings were full of narrative incident and assorted characters which Wagner purged in order to emphasize the aspects of the tale he considered most essential, to achieve dramatic concision and clarity, and to give freest reign to music to shape the emotional narrative. This was his approach in all his adaptations of traditional myths and romances.
> 
> I'm not familiar with a Messiaen work on this subject. What is it? There's also a sort of oratorio by Frank Martin called _Le vin herbe._


Thanks for that.

Turangalila....not, obviously, "about" T and I in the same way, but it was more than merely inspired by it, I think.


----------



## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Wagner's main source was the 12th-century version by Gottfried von Strassburg. As far as I know, the idea of having T and I in love before drinking the potion was original with Wagner, and definitely represents a modern, more psychological, more realistic take on the story. The old tellings were full of narrative incident and assorted characters which Wagner purged in order to emphasize the aspects of the tale he considered most essential, to achieve dramatic concision and clarity, and to give freest reign to music to shape the emotional narrative. This was his approach in all his adaptations of traditional myths and romances.


I feel like in Gottfried von Strassburg's version Tristan was at least already well on the way to being in love with Isolde. Or, at least, he kept visiting Isolde on the voyage and spent much time in her quarters. (It was during one of these visits, when Brangane was away, that they drank the potion, not knowing what it was).

Strassburg's Isolde, however, hated Tristan:

--------------
Now when the maid and the man, isolde and Tristan, had drunk the draught, in an instant that arch-disturber of tranquility was there, Love, waylayer of all hearts, and she had stolen in! Before they were aware of it she had planted her victorious standard in their two hearts and bowed them beneath her yoke. They who were tow and divided became one and united. No longer were they at variance: Isolde's hatred was gone....

When Tristan felt the stirrings of love he at once remembered loyalty and honour, and strove to turn away.... But his heart was impelled towards her.
--------------

And, to be clear, I wrote the above. And then I translated it from Middle High German. 

(Heh. Of course I neither wrote nor translated that. That's from part 15 of Gottfried von Strassburg's _Tristan_ in the translation by Arthur Thomas Hatto).



Woodduck said:


> I'm not familiar with a Messiaen work on this subject. What is it? There's also a sort of oratorio by Frank Martin called _Le vin herbe._


Messiaen's _Turangalîla-Symphonie_. I think you can be forgiven for not realizing it was inspired by the Tristan and Isolde stories; it is instrumental and even the titles of the ten sections do not mention Tristan or Isolde and aren't even really clear references to the story.


----------



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

mountmccabe said:


> I feel like in Gottfried von Strassburg's version Tristan was at least already well on the way to being in love with Isolde. Or, at least, he kept visiting Isolde on the voyage and spent much time in her quarters. (It was during one of these visits, when Brangane was away, that they drank the potion, not knowing what it was).
> 
> Strassburg's Isolde, however, hated Tristan:
> --------------
> ...


I heard Turangalila (many years ago now) and didn't realize Messiaen had the T & I story in mind. As you say, there's no indication of it in the piece itself.

I'd forgotten Isolde's dislike for Tristan in the old story. It survives in Wagner's telling as her violent (and understandable) reaction to his betraying her. Nothing engenders hatred like a betrayal of love.

Isolde's ambivalence, as a portrait of love/hate, inspires some further thoughts...

Wagner's version of the story is quite sophisticated in expressing the ambiguity of human feelings, the hidden motives, contradictory behaviors and unpredictable fates of characters dealing with impossible circumstances and riven by conflicting desires. Tristan's and Isolde's world (like ours!) is out of control: efforts fail, hopes are dashed, things do not turn out as expected. Tristan reverses the syllables of his name to avoid identification but is recognized. Isolde tries to kill Tristan but drops her sword when she falls in love with him. Tristan returns her love but buries it and abducts her in the service of his uncle and king. Tristan desires Isolde but avoids her. Isolde loves Tristan but curses him and seeks to kill both him and herself. Brangaene is loyal to Isolde but disobeys her. A drink intended to bring death brings a release of passion. A night of blissful dreams brings shame and despair. Melot is Tristan's truest friend and supporter but betrays him out of jealousy. Tristan challenges Melot but allows himself to be mortally wounded. Isolde promises to follow Tristan but remains in Cornwall with Marke. Tristan curses the potion he had drunk willingly and praised. The lovers wished to die together but Tristan dies in Isolde's arms. And Isolde reaches her vision of bliss only through her own death.

It was the tragic element, Wagner said, which most attracted him to the story. And it's the tragedy, not only of the lovers, but of all the characters and of life in their world, which sets the tone of somberness which underlies even the moments of ecstasy. We are not permitted the fond illusion of earthly bliss; the cruelties of "der Tag" constantly intervene to prevent access to the "Wunderreich der Nacht," and the conflict between the day and night worlds is not merely a matter of accidental circumstances but a tragic principle pervading the very fabric of the universe, and thus the souls of the characters. As Tristan says in his moment of deepest despair and self-comprehension, "The fearful drink that brings me anguish - I, I myself prepared it!" That revelation, which lays him out unconscious, does at least permit him a moment of release and a vision of Isolde coming to him over the sea before desire returns to destroy his body and mind and he dies in her arms, breathing her name.

It's a hard truth that a vision of beatitude is all we are permitted in this life, but the fact that Tristan and Isolde are each in the end afforded such a vision, though it doesn't deny the tragedy of life, can help us accept and rise above it, as it helped them. It leaves us unsure whether a tale of such uncompromising passion for a higher state of being is a tragedy after all.


----------



## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

Regarding Gottfried, some critics believe that both Tristan and Isolde are well on their way to falling in love even before drinking the potion. Yes, Isolde expresses her hatred for Tristan, but in such vehement terms as to make it entirely plausible the lady doth protest too much (as she does in Wagner).

It's possible, of course, that such a reading of the medieval text is influenced by Wagner's opera. On the other hand, Wagner may have elaborated on psychological complexities already at least hinted at in Gottfried.

[Note: I wrote that all by myself. ]


----------



## rw181383 (Aug 4, 2017)

An interesting summary of Tristan recordings: http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/Aug/Wagner_Tristan_survey.pdf


----------



## DarkAngel (Aug 11, 2010)

rw181383 said:


> An interesting summary of Tristan recordings: http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/Aug/Wagner_Tristan_survey.pdf


Nice find, I have read that author's comments many times on Amazon so nice to have them collected all together.....

His comments regarding sound limits for 41 MET Leinsdorf Tristan need to be updated with recent release of much improved Pristine XR version mentioned here several times










*The two Varnay Isolde's I want to add this:
*
- 53 Jochum could have been great but sound quality on every version I have check distort badly on (many) peaks or as author more diplomatically says "some peaking on loud notes", especially grating on final liebestod aria

- 55 MET Kempe is preferred with better sound and Varnay equally as dramatic, Set Svanholm is far from a "unremarkable" Tristan and for Kempe's supposed "uninspired conducting" both descriptions I find puzzling comments from author


----------

