Tristan und Isolde
Tristan and Isolde
Famous even among those who are not accustomed to Wagner's music-dramas is Isolde's swan song, commonly called the Liebestod (Love-death) from the third act of Tristan und Isolde. This is Isolde's closing apostrophe (also the last thing sung in the opera) wherein, over the body of her lover, the dead-by-his-own-hand Tristan, she, in ecstatic transport, sees him alive, his figure in splendor shining before her on high amid perfumed billow. On seeing this vision she brings the drama to a climax by rhapsodizing upon the scene to some of the most affectingly beautiful music ever written (drawn from the love music of the second act). Finally she sinks apparently lifeless onto Tristan's corpse as the orchestra sounds for the first and only time, the harmonic resolution that has been repeatedly and agonizingly evaded throughout the opera's entire length.
A painting of Tristan and Isolde in mad King' Ludwig II's bedroom
at the Neuschwanstein castle in Bavaria, Germany
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