The Shape of Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde

Attending a recent performance of Richard Wagner's opera, Tristan und Isolde at the Laandestheater in Detmold, reminded me that Wagner's Tristan is truly a revolutionary opera. The 20th century is born in the opening, unresolvable "Tristan" chord, and over its gestation of 4 hours a new type of art is born which weds music, philosophy, myth and psychology into a love story of shattering dimensions. From Tristan will also emerge a blazing new generation of art, psychology, music, ideas and culture which still resonates today.


Never before had a libretto so explored the hidden depths of the human psyche, its unexplained wounds, its dark desires, as well as man's inner conflict of eros and thanatos, "love and death." But the text is only the foundation upon which Wagner's music can take shape through his seemingly endless chromatic modulations, that reach out without ever finding their longed-for resolution, and his brilliant use of leitmotifs to reveal and conceal his character's inner-most thoughts and longings.


I don't believe that Wagner was writing an opera about forbidden love, he was writing an opera about the causes that leads a man to it. The famous love-potion, liebestrank, is merely a trope to set the game in motion so that Wagner can slowly unveil what lies at the heart of every man and woman - the longing for the annihilation from suffering through either love or death. Tristan und Isolde is merely the frame...life is merely the frame...our relationships are merely the frame about this dark and startling question at the heart of all mankind.

For me Wagner's ultimate response only makes sense within the realm of his opera, though countless others have no doubt tried to realize it in life itself. The glaring fact is that, were we to live that way, for our darkest impulses and desires, society would shatter under the weight of such utter egotistical selfishness. Its like trying to live your therapy sessions outside of the doctors office. We go to a doctor to find healing, we go to the opera to experience catharsis. If we don't leave the doctors office, or if we never leave the opera house, we can't successfully live out our lives. It might appear beautiful, fascinating and even haunting to remain in the veiled world of night, but without the light of day our healing is illusion and only illness remains. Opera, like Therapy, works best when used to assist us in our lives and not as a substitute for them.

And yet I will continue to enjoy performances of Tristan und Isolde so I can sail on waves of music that seem to endlessly yearn, explore the lives of all these multi-dimensional characters and of course, continue the encounter with my own deeply mysterious  psychology and the question of its motivations. But as I watch Isolde sing her final aria of transfiguration over the lifeless body of her beloved Tristan, her Liebestod, I shall always keep before my eye the vast canvas by Titian that Wagner saw during one of his visits to Venice. As he stepped into the Frari Church and beheld a beautiful woman engulfed in a swirling red gown, eyes and hands raised in ecstasy while men below stared up at her in wonder and awe as heaven received her, Wagner is to have said, "That is my Isolde." I wonder if he truly understood the blessed mystery behind his own words?