An opening cello phrase answered by a half-diminished chord that will not resolve for four hours (1865)
The Tristan chord — F, B, D sharp, G sharp — the most analysed sonority in music
Recording: user:OldakQuill · EEF OAL-1, Wikimedia Commons
Opera · German opera
Tristan und Isolde
10 June 1865, Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater, Munich
Richard Wagner · libretto by the composer, after Gottfried von Strassburg
An Irish princess being shipped to Cornwall as a bride calls for a death potion, and her maid substitutes a love potion instead. What follows is three acts of almost unbroken yearning, ending with the heroine singing herself to death over her lover's body. Its unresolved opening chord and endless chromatic suspension are routinely called the beginning of modern music.
How to spot them
- ▸Wagner called it a Handlung — an 'action' — in three acts, not an opera
- ▸Almost no plot: a ship, a garden at night, a castle in Brittany, and a great deal of longing
- ▸Written under the spell of Schopenhauer and of Mathilde Wesendonck
- ▸A cor anglais plays a desolate shepherd's tune offstage through much of Act 3
- ▸The harmony refuses to settle until the very last bar of the opera
Arias & moments — listen
"Mild und leise wie er lächelt" — a woman sings herself to death over her lover's body (1865)
The Liebestod, which Wagner himself called the Verklärung, or transfiguration
Recording: Gegeours · CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
"O sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe" — the lovers beg night never to end (1865)
The Act 2 love duet, interrupted by the hunting party's return
A maid substitutes a love potion for the death draught her mistress demanded (1865)
Brangäne's deception, the one real event in the plot
"Einsam wachend in der Nacht" — a warning sung from a tower while the lovers ignore it (1865)
Brangäne's Watch, floating above the Act 2 duet
A wounded man waits at Kareol for a sail, to a cor anglais tune played offstage (1865)
The Act 3 prelude and shepherd's alte Weise
Quick-fire facts
- •The premiere on 10 June 1865 was conducted by Hans von Bülow, whose wife Cosima was already Wagner's lover and bore him a daughter that April.
- •Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, the first Tristan, died six weeks after the premiere, aged 29 — legend blamed the role.
- •Vienna abandoned the work as unperformable after 77 rehearsals in 1862–63.
- •The libretto is based on Gottfried von Strassburg's thirteenth-century Middle High German romance.
- •Wagner's affair of the mind with Mathilde Wesendonck produced the five Wesendonck Lieder, two of which he called studies for Tristan.
- •Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation underlies the opera's exaltation of night and oblivion.
- •The 'Tristan chord' opening the Prelude is usually read as F–B–D sharp–G sharp; its ambiguity is a standard exam question in harmony.
- •King Marke is Tristan's uncle; Melot betrays the lovers; Kurwenal is Tristan's faithful retainer.
Drill it — 7 cards
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Sources
- Grove Music Online (Oxford Music Online) — Wagner, Richard: Tristan und Isolde
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Tristan und Isolde
- Barry Millington — The New Grove Guide to Wagner and His Operas