The now-menacing trumpets of the hunting party are heard, and Brangäne utters a shrill cry. Kurvenal rushes in, begging Tristan to save himself, but it is too late. King Marke, Melot, and the other hunters enter to find Tristan and Isolde still embracing. Tristan, after a long and heavy silence, notes that “dreary day” now dawns, “for the last time.” Melot cruelly points out the lovers to King Marke, bragging that he has preserved loyalty and honor.
Comment: Law, duty, other people, and daylight all come crashing in on Tristan and Isolde. Reality, in a word, has shattered the love experience, if only temporarily. The lovers could have run, hidden, eloped, or used any number of ruses, but presumably they have been playing this game for a while by now, and their words just before Marke’s arrival make it clear that the time for compromises is over. Their love requires the final fulfillment. They are accepting and inviting death.
Has Melot really preserved love and honor? asks Marke, whose slow and measured phrases tell of his utter shock at the discovery. If Tristan is capable of betrayal, should Marke hope to find loyalty in Melot or anyone else? Is there such a thing as truth, if Tristan can be false? Why did Tristan serve Marke for so long, increasing the glory of his crown? When Marke’s wife died childless, he swore not to remarry, that Tristan might inherit the kingdom, but Tristan joined the other vassals in requesting a queen, and promised the fairest maid of all for Cornwall. It was not Marke’s idea, it was Tristan’s. Was it only to open Marke’s heart to the maid in order to poison it better? Why should Marke, who has not earned hell, be condemned to suffer it?
Comment: Poor Marke has the worst reputation of any of Wagner’s long-winded bass-baritones, including Wotan and Hans Sachs. His address here lasts a full fifteen minutes, all of it sung in exceedingly plodding phrases depicting Marke’s stunned condition. Actually, he’s not as bad as people make him out to be, and his address improves considerably with repeated listenings. He is, in many ways, the most pathetic character in the drama, and his words are clear and heartfelt. His tragedy lies entirely in Tristan’s betrayal rather than Isolde’s. He praises Isolde, but was never led to expect love from her, while Tristan has been his one friend and heir, more son than nephew. This also increases our sympathy for him at the end of the opera. Marke’s sadness is a convincing and radically daring way to bring the stratospheric tone of the Liebesnacht back down to earth.
Tristan, in sympathy with Marke, says he cannot answer these questions. He turns to Isolde, asking if she will accompany him to the land where he must now go, the dark land of night from which his mother sent him when she died giving birth to him. Isolde replies that she has followed Tristan to one strange land and will follow him to the next. Tristan kisses her on the forehead. Melot draws his sword in a rage, challenging Tristan as a traitor. Tristan asks who calls him. He sees Melot, once his friend, saying Melot was blinded by jealousy at the sight of Isolde. Tristan lets his sword drop, and Melot wounds him deeply, prevented from dealing a death blow only by the intercession of Marke.
Comment: Tristan’s inability to answer Marke’s sensible questions is sad and beautiful. He is confessing that he can no longer answer for his actions, and accepts whatever consequences this implies. Some tenors go an extra step with this, and plunge themselves headlong onto Melot’s sword, which is perhaps overdoing it. We already know from his entrance in Act I that Tristan is a bit morbid.
Act III
Setting: A ruined castle along the rocky and barren coast of Brittany. Tristan lies as if dead under a lime tree. Kurvenal is nearby.
A Shepherd plays a sad song on a pipe.
Comment: The pianissimo strings paint a picture of unrelieved desolation. They give way to the Shepherd’s pipe, actually an English horn, which plays unaccompanied. It is an unparalleled portrayal of a spiritual wasteland. Those who say Wagner was only good for ear-splitting climaxes and ham-fisted crescendos should spend a lifetime or two listening to this four-minute segment.
The Shepherd peers over the wall, asking how Tristan fares. Kurvenal answers that he sleeps. Does the Shepherd not see any ship approaching? No. He will play his sad song until he sees a ship on the horizon, and then he will play a happy tune. He leaves.
Tristan revives enough to ask, “Where am I?” Kurvenal is thrilled to see him restored to life, telling him excitedly that he lies in his own castle of Kareol in Brittany. The song Tristan half-heard was the Shepherd tending Tristan’s flocks, but the hero only partly comprehends. Kurvenal must explain to him that he is in the castle he grew up in before he went to Cornwall. Now Kurvenal has carried him off the boat from Cornwall on his own strong shoulders to his ancestral home, where the light of his homeland sun will heal his wounds.
Tristan sees it differently, but cannot explain it to Kurvenal. He had recently been to where he was “before he was” and to where he is destined to return—the wide realm of night. One thing is certain there: divine, everlasting, total oblivion. The light of day called him back, that same light that still shines around Isolde. The sun’s bright rays have burst open death’s door, and to expire with Isolde and in her has been granted to him. Alas, all the deceits and madness have reawakened in his heart. The day and its light are cursed! Will it burn forever to witness his pain? Will this light burn forever to keep him parted from Isolde, even at night? When will this light be extinguished?
Comment: Tristan’s monologue (or monologues, since there are two more of them directly following) are famous, but are rarely heard in recital programs. The theory is that you can sing the whole role if you can sing this part, and if any tenor can sing the role, he does. These monologues are ballbusters! Nowhere are Wagner’s words of advice to his singers more important than here, when he told them to pay attention to the small notes and let the “big” notes take care of themselves (see “Sound Advice,”). He also neglected to add that the tenor here must find some orifice other than the mouth through which to breathe, since the score offers no possibilities to inhale through the mouth. There is no need for nuance or what some singers call “artistry” in this scene. All the nuance is written into the score. What the tenor must do is hit each of the many notes at the dynamic Wagner has indicated—nothing more! Above all, no barking! Perhaps three men in the twentieth century have managed this.
Kurvenal is shocked at what Tristan says, and tries to encourage him. He will see Isolde that very day. So Isolde still lives, mutters Tristan faintly. It was she who called him back from the night. Kurvenal tells him to be happy Isolde lives. She cured him of the wound he received from Morold. She can cure him of Melot’s wound. She is coming now from Cornwall.
Tristan is beside himself at the news of Isolde’s pending arrival. He praises his friend Kurvenal, who has shared his every adventure and misfortune, but his present anguish Kurvenal cannot share. If Kurvenal understood it, he would run to the lookout and see if the ship is approaching. He hallucinates that the ship is approaching, with billowing sails and fluttering flags. Can Kurvenal not see it? The same sad tune of the Shepherd is heard, and Kurvenal must admit the ship is not yet in sight.
Tristan grows melancholy. The sad tune is an old theme of his life. It once brought the tragic news of his father, killed in battle just as Tristan was born, and told him about his mother, who died of grief as she bore him. For what fate was he born? The sad tune reminds him—to desire, and to die! No, oh no! It’s not that. Longing, longing, dying to desire, but not to die of longing! Never dying, yearning, crying for death’s rest! Once, he lay dying in the small boat. He heard the sad tune as the wind blew him toward Ireland’s maid. She cured his wound but opened it up again. She gave him the poisoned cup. He hoped to find the final healing there, but it only brought everlasting torment! The drink, the drink, the fearful drink! Now there is no healing for his longing, not even death! Night casts him out into day. The sun burns. Is there no release? But he realizes he prepared the poison himself, from his parents’ distress. Curse him who prepared that poison! He collapses.
Co
mment: If you think these paragraphs are confusing, you should read the libretto. Tristan is beginning to unravel at this point, and his words get confusing as the music varies between frenzy and near stasis. As in Isolde’s “Narrative and Curse” in Act I, this part of Tristan’s monologue climaxes around his curse.
Although Tristan has a good opportunity to depict the unraveling of a human being here, the role never does really reveal its motivations. Isolde explains herself well, but why is Tristan so death-obsessed? This murkiness is central to his character. It recalls Lancelot in the medieval legends, who is never explored as deeply as Arthur and Guinevere.
Kurvenal tries to calm Tristan. With a choking voice, he asks if Tristan is still alive, joyous when he sees him move his lips. Slowly coming to his senses, Tristan asks if Kurvenal can see the ship yet. Kurvenal assures him it is coming today.
Tristan is transported into a ravishing ecstasy at the thought of Isolde waving from the ship. Can Kurvenal not see her yet? She brings comfort and peace and his final refreshment. Oh, Isolde, how beautiful she is! Can’t Kurvenal see her yet? He must go where he can see. He becomes frenzied. Is the ship coming? Kurvenal restrains Tristan; at the same moment he hears the Shepherd, now playing a happy tune on his pipe.
Kurvenal cries out. The ship is in sight! Tristan’s excitement grows yet more. Didn’t he know she would come? Of course Isolde is alive and on her way, or why else would Tristan still live? Kurvenal calls out to the approaching ship. It bears a bright flag, a sign that Isolde is on board. The ship passes out of sight, behind rocks. Tristan worries about the danger of the reef. Are Melot and his men aboard? Surely all is lost. Kurvenal sees the ship pass and arrive safely in harbor. He hurries down to meet it and to carry Isolde back up to the castle.
Tristan excitedly praises this beautiful day, which races his blood and rejoices his spirit. Delirious, he raises himself up. Bleeding, he once battled Morold. Now bleeding, he will pursue Isolde. Insanely, he tears the bandages from his wound, ecstatic as it gushes blood. Isolde is coming!
Comment: Tristan rants as he writhes in frenzy at the news that Isolde is coming. If he was unraveling in the preceding sections, he has pretty much flipped out by this point. The orchestra echoes this. It plays recognizable music from the love scene in Act II, but in broken phrases. Love has snapped him.
As for the bandage and blood business, yes, it is written in the actual stage instructions, and one gets the feeling that Wagner wanted everybody to see the blood flow—lots of it. It is ghastly as well as grotesquely orgasmic.
Isolde calls Tristan from afar. He lurches to her, saying the torch is extinguished. She rushes in breathless and they embrace. Barely able to exclaim her name, Tristan dies in her arms.
Comment: They call out each other’s names as they had after drinking the potion in Act I, when they were united in love, but this time very faintly, since they are now uniting in death.
She begs him to rise, just one more time, just for an hour, that she may die with him. She calls him spiteful, punishing her thus. Can she not tell her sorrows to him just one more time, not even once? She imagines he is waking, and collapses unconscious on his body.
Commotion is heard from afar. The Shepherd climbs over the wall to tell Kurvenal a second ship has arrived. Kurvenal calls for weapons. The helmsman of Isolde’s ship rushes in, confirming that Marke has arrived with soldiers. Brangäne’s voice is heard from afar, calling for Isolde. Kurvenal asks what she wants, and Brangäne tells him to open the gate. Kurvenal calls her a traitor. Melot is heard outside, and Kurvenal laughs heartily, challenging him. Melot rushes in with soldiers, and Kurvenal strikes him dead. Brangäne tries to calm Kurvenal, but he calls his men and a fight ensues. Marke is the next to call Kurvenal, but he replies to the king that there is nothing but death to be found within. The king may enter if that’s what he wants. Marke enters with Brangäne, who runs joyfully to Isolde. Marke asks for Tristan. Kurvenal, who is now wounded, points out the dead body to the king and, calling Tristan’s name, dies grasping the hero’s hand.
Marke surveys the death and addresses Tristan, his dearest friend. Brangäne brings Isolde to her senses and explains that she told the king about the love potion. In haste he put to sea to find Isolde, to release her from her marriage vows and allow her to be with Tristan. Marke asks Isolde why she had not told him of the potion, and how relieved he was to find that Tristan did not willingly betray him. He flew full sail to give her to this glorious man in marriage, but with these peaceful intentions, he caused nothing but death. Isolde cannot hear him. She is already senseless to this world.
Comment: They’re dropping like flies at Castle Kareol! Kurvenal and Melot die matter-of-factly, befitting their entirely unimaginative existences, and contrasting with the prolonged death throes of Tristan and Isolde. Marke’s forgiving of the lovers is a splendid touch, showing that nobody really needs to die, at least not because of law or vengeance or any earthly reason. Tristan and Isolde must die to fulfill their inner destinies. If every creature’s goal is self-actualization, these two can only actualize themselves in death. It’s really not about who’s sleeping with whose wife anymore.
Isolde gazes ecstatically upon Tristan’s corpse. Look how gently and mildly he smiles. Don’t the others see this too? How he shines ever lighter, borne amid the stars. Don’t they see it? Isolde hears wonderful music that knows, explains, and reconciles everything. The waves of sound are like perfumed clouds around her. Shall she listen? Shall she breathe them and plunge into them? To drown in that ocean of sound, infinite Everything, World Spirit, unknowing, descending—highest bliss!
Comment: This is the moment half the audience has been waiting for, the celebrated Liebestod, or “Love-death.” It is familiar from concert programs, in which sopranos who would never sing Isolde work wonders with this distinct piece. The Liebestod is different from the rest of the role, requiring not only different demands on the voice but a certain something from deep inside the woman who sings it as well.
Almost all the commentaries call the poetry of the Liebestod untranslatable, which would imply that the meaning is perfectly clear in German but doesn’t carry across to English. This is not the case. If Tristan was twisted and snapped, so to speak, in his scene, Isolde, by contrast, is now cut loose and soaring. The meter of the poetry is extremely basic: ONE-two-THREE-four. This is misleading, however, since the music uses this metric structure merely as a framework for a pattern of seamless waves. These waves build upon each other in a great sweep, and suggestive words, such as “radiance,” “soaring,” and “breathing,” ride on the crest of sound. The soprano needs more than the legato line of the bel canto singer to give the whole an inherent unity; she needs an inner cohesion—what we might call a mega-legato. Seamlessness is one of the goals in singing the Liebestod. Her singing ends with an octave leap at “highest bliss,” from F-sharp to F-sharp. If she can carry this smoothly, she will take the audience with her.
This transformation is the central idea of the Liebestod, and it’s the reason the soprano must rely on something inside herself to make it come alive. The entire life experience of a woman goes into achieving this metamorphosis for the audience. This is why the Liebestod cannot be faked. Dramatics won’t carry it, and neither will personality in the outward sense. The inner woman must come across the footlights and hold a sort of mirror to the audience. Clearly, narrative poetry would have no place here.
BASICS: WHEN TO EAT, DRINK, AND VISIT THE RESTROOM
Tristan is one of Wagner’s most evenly balanced operas in terms of times of the respective acts. Each act is about one and a half hours long, with the first and third being just under and the second being just over. No one intermission of this opera is the “go to the rest room or die” intermission. Nor does any single act as a whole offer any particular challenges by being the “mellow” part, where those who have overindulged at the bar or cafe are sure to pass out. Standard theater strategies will be fine here.
ROUGH S
POTS AND HOW TO GET THROUGH THEM
As a rule, Tristan will either capture your imagination or it won’t. That said, there are a few moments that even seasoned Wagnerites find more challenging, let’s say, than others. In Act I, Brangäne and Isolde take some time saying little until they get down to what’s really going on. Listen to the orchestra here, if the soprano and the mezzo aren’t holding you. You will recognize distorted and repressed love and longing everywhere. Also, people tend to expect more action the first time Isolde and Tristan come face to face in the opera. This misses the point entirely. Be patient—sparks will fly soon enough, sufficient to blow your wig off. This initial encounter shows them attempting to comply with the world’s expectations of them, and they’re not having an easy time of it. If you are familiar with the singers’ voices from recordings or other performances, listen to see how well they are persuading you that they are not quite themselves in this scene. Some performers convey this with acting instead, which is almost as good.
In Act II, we have already seen that the quiet, central part of the love scene is not boring, but people tend to snooze here anyway. Forgive yourself and move on. The end of the act is, of course, everyone’s chief gripe about this opera. Marke is the human element of the story; he is deeply hurt, and people who are deeply hurt do not tend to express themselves in florid phrases. Of course he’s anticlimactic. That’s the whole point. Try to follow his words and gestures, and see if he can arouse enough sympathy to persuade you of his humanity. He is the closest thing to you in this drama, whatever your actual life experience has been. If that doesn’t work, just bide your time and be assured that an intermission is coming after he stops singing.
Wagner Without Fear Page 16