Beethoven and more 2011 podcast #31: Hopeless love
October 14, 2011
Richard Wagner
Prelude and Liebestod from the opera "Tristan and Isolde" (excerpt)
Beethoven Orchestra Bonn
Conductor: Stefan Blunier
MP3 recorded on October 2, 2011 in the Beethoven Hall Bonn by West German Radio (WDR)
Richard Wagner discovered the Tristan tale, based on ancient Celtic legends, in the epic verses of Gottfried von Strassburg, one of the great poets in Middle High German.
Wagner's music drama tells of a fateful three-way relationship of Isolde, a beautiful Irish princess, the all-too-trusting King Mark of Cornwall and his nephew Tristan, the knight who longs for death. In it, Wagner was inspired by his own scandalous relationship to Mathilde Wesendonck. The wife of his patron Otto Wesendonck was his muse at that time. Wagner created his mighty music drama, in his own words, "as though in a state of intoxication."
The story is built less on the plot than on the protagonists' inner emotions. At the end, Isolde dies the "love-death" in order to be united with Tristan in the hereafter.
Author: Inge Ivanovic
Editor: Rick Fulker