This 10 June,
2015, we are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the première of Tristan und Isolde (Munich, 10 June
1865). According to the French-born
American historian and philosopher, Jacques Barzun, the year 1859 was a pivotal
year. In 1941, Professor Barzun wrote a seminal work, Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a
Heritage. The recently deceased Columbia University professor said that
in 1859, three major revolutionary works were
finalized: The Origin of the Species,
by Charles Darwin, the Critique of
Political Economy, by Karl Marx, and Tristan und Isolde, by Richard Wagner. Since then, biology, social sciences
and music have acquired new meanings and dimensions and we are still living with
the results of such major revolutions.
For many Wagnerians, Tristan represents the supreme peak of
the master’s musical inspiration (equaled, perhaps, but never surpassed by his
later works); its music and words are a sublime praise of love, a love that is
so powerful that it has the capacity to transform everything, including death
itself. Because of its stifling, erotic and intoxicating character, this opera
has been the Mount Everest of singers and
conductors, being simultaneously monumental and uncomfortably intimate. Wagner
himself told us that it is about “dying without death, and therefore everlasting
falling back upon itself”; longing (“Sehnen”, the key concept in Tristan) keeps Tristan alive, while he
is dying for Isolde. “If well performed, it will render the listener insane”,
admonished Wagner.
Germán Bravo-Casas
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