About the work
Richard Wagner's three-act music drama was premiered in 1865 at the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich under Hans von Bülow, twenty-two years after Wagner wrote the first sketches. The work revolutionised Western harmony through its famous opening chord—the Tristan chord—and is widely considered one of the central works of Romantic music. Wagner based the libretto on the medieval legend of Tristan and Iseult, composing it during his passion for Mathilde Wesendonck.
Plot
The Irish princess Isolde is being escorted by the knight Tristan to marry his uncle, King Marke of Cornwall. The two already share a painful history: Tristan killed Isolde's betrothed and she nonetheless nursed him back to health. On the ship, humiliated and bitter, Isolde demands a shared death by poison, but her maid Brangäne substitutes a love potion. Overwhelmed by passion, Tristan and Isolde confess their love and are discovered by King Marke. The betrayed king exiles Tristan, who is mortally wounded in a fight. Dying in his castle in Brittany, Tristan awaits Isolde and tears off his bandages at the sight of her ship. She arrives as he dies; in her transfiguring Liebestod, she sinks lifeless upon his body, united with him in death.
Cultural significance
Tristan und Isolde is a foundational work of musical modernism. The unresolved dissonance of its opening chord anticipated the harmonic innovations of the twentieth century and influenced composers from Debussy to Schoenberg and Berg; some historians date the beginning of modern music to its first bars. The Prelude and Liebestod are among the most frequently performed orchestral excerpts in the concert repertoire. The opera's extreme demands defeated its first production, abandoned after seventy-seven rehearsals as unsingable; its original Tristan, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, died weeks after the premiere, fuelling the work's mythology. Bayreuth productions from Wieland Wagner's abstract 1952 staging to Christoph Marthaler's controversial 2005 interpretation have driven decades of critical debate.