TRISTAN UND ISOLDE

The genre-typical conflict of a love triangle has never been compacted in an opera as elementarily and ultimately transcending as it is in Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. Tristan and Isolde’s passionate love stands above all societal norms here. King Marke is betrayed as Isolde’s lawful husband by Isolde and Tristan, but Wagner’s music confirms and legitimises the adultery. Immediately in the first act, Tristan and Isolde’s shared death wish draws them to their plan to take their lives together. So what psychological source can this death wish be attributed to? Unknowingly the central characters drink a love potion instead of the expected poison. Do the now overflowing emotions truly spring directly from a supposedly magical love spell? The music also transcends all boundaries with Wagner exhausting the traditional tonality in chromatic sounds, and of course he subsequently heavily influenced modern compositional techniques right into the 20th century. The ambiguous harmony introduced in the Prelude, which repeatedly returns as a leitmotif throughout the plot, later became known as Wagner's famous “Tristan chord”.