When Act III opens, Tristan’s man Kurwenal has brought his master home to Brittany to recover from a dangerous wound. At first delirious, he wakes from a dream of serene beauty. Isolde’s ship is seen approaching. Tristan sends his men down to meet her, then tears the bandages off his wound, to die at her feet. Others arrive, Vagariesof Operatic Love there is more bloodshed, King Mark offers forgiveness, but Isolde desires only to join Tristan in death.
— Tristan und Isolde, Act III, Tristan’s dream and suicide 12½ Ian Storey, Gerd Grochowski (Kurwenal); La Scala, 2007
— Tristan und Isolde, Act III, Isolde’s Liebestod 7 Waltraud Meier; La Scala, 2007
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11. Transcending Desire Class Eleven: Transcending Desire C. On the Knife-Edge of Desire The 1912 novella Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (1875–1955) seems in retrospect an obvious choice for Benjamin Britten (1913–76), Operas about love, whose physical consummation is whose last opera it was (1973). But it was also an extraordinarily either willingly postponed or suspended altogether. taxing one personally, since the composer, like Mann’s protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach, was creatively inspired by the beauty of young boys, yet struggled all his life (apparently successfully) to avoid A. Thou Still-Unravished Bride his admiration turning to abuse. To give himself some distance from the subject, he develops ideas in the opera that are only hinted at by In his “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” Keats extols the beauty of a never- Mann, casting the writer’s emotional dilemma as a Platonic struggle consummated love. A similar situation obtains in La Calisto (1652) by between Apollo and Dionysos. Pier Francesco Cavalli (1602–76). Diana is in love with the shepherd Endymion, but to preserve her vow of chastity, she must confine We shall watch the end of the opera in the 1981 filmed version by herself to caressing him at night in a ray of moonlight. Tony Palmer, set in Venice, but incorporating many other visual images that reflect the hallucinatory quality of the work. — La Calisto, Act II, final duet of Diana and Endimione 4 Louise Winter, Graham Pushee; Herbert Wernicke (d), — Death in Venice, Aschenbach’s soliloquy and finale 13 René Jacobs (c); Brussels 2005 Robert Gard, John Shirley-Quirk; Tony Palmer (d), 1981
B. Behind a Veil of Symbols D. A Love Realized in Death Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) by Claude Debussy (1862–1918) ends Tristan and Isolde (1865), the masterpiece of Richard Wagner with the confession of an adulterous, but still unconsummated love. (1813–83), is based on a medieval legend. It is the story of two But it is an opera with its own peculiar sense of time, in which the lovers, Tristan of Brittany and Queen Isolde of Ireland, who process of falling in love seems to stretch out for ever, without recognize their love only on the ship on which he is escorting her as either of the two characters being aware of it. Based on an 1893 play the bride of his liege, King Mark of Cornwall. The legend has it that by the Belgian symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949), it is a they drink a love potion, but that is merely a catalyst for emotions kind of rewriting ofTristan and Isolde, set in a deliberately distant already roiling beneath the surface. medieval world, where nothing is quite as it seems, and every detail — Tristan und Isolde, Act I, ending appears to hold a hidden meaning. Mélisande appears from 5 Waltraud Meier, Ian Storey; Patrice Chéreau (d), nowhere as a lost girl weeping by a woodland well. She is rescued Daniel Barenboim (c); La Scala, 2007 and married by Prince Golaud, but her closest affinity is to his half- brother Pelléas, who seems a lost soul himself. In the scene we shall In Act II, the lovers meet during a night hunt involving the rest of the see, she is in a tower, Rapunzel-like, combing her hair for the night. court. Heedless of the warnings of Isolde’s maid Brangäne, they sing of a consummation they will find only in death. Twice their music — Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande, Act III, scene 1 12½ Christine Oelze, Richard Croft; Graham Vick (d), Andrew rises towards a climax, twice is it interrupted, the last time by the Davis (c); Glyndebourne 2005 sudden return of King Mark and his court. — Tristan und Isolde, Act II love duet, ending 7½ As above, with Michelle de Young (Brangäne); La Scala, 2007