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Tristan and Isolde Music and Words by Richard Wagner Prelude to Act 1 Act 2 Esa-Pekka Salonen Conductor Isolde

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Tristan and Isolde Music and Words by Richard Wagner Prelude to Act 1 Act 2 Esa-Pekka Salonen Conductor Isolde Program One HundRed TWenTy-SeCOnd SeASOn Chicago Symphony orchestra riccardo muti Music director Pierre Boulez Helen Regenstein Conductor emeritus Yo-Yo ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO Thursday, February 21, 2013, at 8:00 Saturday, February 23, 2013, at 8:00 Tristan and Isolde Music and Words by Richard Wagner Prelude to Act 1 Act 2 Esa-Pekka Salonen Conductor Isolde .......................................................Linda Watson Soprano Brangäne..............................michelle DeYoung Mezzo-soprano Tristan ...........................................................Stefan Vinke Tenor Melot ......................................................... Sean Panikkar Tenor King Mark .........................................John relyea Bass-baritone Kurwenal ........................................................Daniel Eifert Bass There will be no intermission. Performed in honor of the bicentennial of Richard Wagner’s birth. Supertitles by Sonya Friedman These concerts are endowed in part by the Kirkland & Ellis LLP Concert Fund. The CSO thanks Julie and Roger Baskes for their generous support of this concert series. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Comments by PhilliP huscher richard Wagner Born May 22, 1813, Leipzig, Germany. Died February 13, 1883, Venice, Italy. music from Tristan and Isolde Prelude to act 1 act 2 ristan and Isolde towers over the Ages for its subject, Tristan cast its Thistory of music—more than long shadow far into the future— 150 years after it was written, it’s stretching across the twentieth still a work of unsettling power and century’s first modernist masters, influence. With this one composi- from Debussy to Berg, all the way tion, Wagner revealed the scope to Radiohead, the radical rock of his vision and guaranteed that band that quoted the opera’s plush music would never be the same. harmonies in its blockbuster Kid A. Reaching back to the Middle At once mythical and modern, ComPoSED moSt rECEnt CSo aPProximatE 1857–1859 SuBSCriPtion ConCErt PErFormanCE timE PErFormanCES Prelude: 12 minutes FirSt PErFormanCE Prelude: April 29, 2008, Act 2: 72 minutes Prelude: March 12, 1859, Orchestra Hall. Kent Prague nagano conducting CSo rECorDingS Opera: June 10, 1865; Opera: October 16, 2001, oF PrELuDE Munich, Germany Orchestra Hall. With 1947. Artur Rodzinski Christian Franz (Tristan), conducting. RCA FirSt CSo Waltraud Meier (Isolde), 1976. Sir Georg Solti SuBSCriPtion ConCErt nadja Michael (Brangäne), conducting. London (video) PErFormanCES Andreas Schmidt (Kurwenal), Prelude: december 18, John Tomlinson (King Mark), 1977. Sir Georg Solti 1891, Auditorium Brian davis (Melot). daniel conducting. London Theatre. Theodore Barenboim conducting 1994. daniel Barenboim Thomas conducting conducting. Teldec inStrumEntation Opera: november 21, 1935, three flutes and piccolo, two A 1958 performance Orchestra Hall. With Lauritz oboes and english horn, conducted by Fritz Reiner Melchior (Tristan), dorothee two clarinets and bass is included in From the Manski (Isolde), Kathryn clarinet, three bassoons, Archives, vol. 3. A 1966 Meisle (Brangäne), Fred four horns, three trumpets, performance conducted by Patton (Kurwenal), Chase three trombones and tuba, Rafael Kubelík is included in Baromeo (King Mark), timpani, harp, strings, six From the Archives, vol. 16. Howard Preston (Melot). offstage horns Frederick Stock conducting 2 symphonic and operatic, immense generosity—Otto’s money paid for and intimate, Tristan and Isolde is three concerts of Wagner’s music the kind of masterpiece that wipes in 1853—and out all the familiar distinctions as it he would maps out its own new territory. soon test their It began, innocently, in marriage December 1854, when Wagner as well, for wrote to Franz Liszt, “Since I Wagner now have never in my life enjoyed the had his eye true happiness of love, I intend on Mathilde. to raise a monument to this most That August, beautiful of dreams.” More than a after nearly decade would pass before Wagner a decade of presented Tristan and Isolde, and, work, Wagner in the meantime, he used those put aside nearest him to work out his artistic the Ring at fantasies, straining his relationship the end of Minna Wagner, Richard’s first wife, with her lapdog, with Liszt to the breaking point. Siegfried, 1853 Wagner became so intimately act 2, to involved with the creation of devote himself Tristan and Isolde—and with the to a tale of idea of love as a natural force so unquenchable uncontrollable that it could upset passion and social conventions and ruin lives— longing. On that it’s difficult for us today, as August 20 he it was for Wagner, to distinguish began a prose between art and everyday life in draft of his this music. new music drama, Tristan he first musical sketch for and Isolde. TTristan and Isolde is dated On December 19, 1856. Wagner was September 5, then at work on Siegfried, the third 1857, two installment in his enormous Ring newlyweds Mathilde Wesendonck by Karl Ferdinand Sohn, 1850 cycle, and he was at something of entered this a crossroads in his life. His mar- picture of riage meant nothing to him; his domestic work, too, seemed to have reached unrest: the a dead end. In April 1857, Wagner distinguished conductor Hans and his long-suffering wife Minna von Bülow and his young bride, rented a small house in the Zurich Cosima Liszt, daughter of the great suburb of Enge from Otto and composer. Wagner had met Cosima Mathilde Wesendonk, who lived before, and remembered her only in the new villa next door. Wagner as a shy fifteen-year-old, tagging had already tested the Wesendonks’ alongside her famous father. She 3 made a scarcely better impression Wagner read aloud the finished this time, yet she would eventually poem of Tristan. There, gathered become the most important person at his feet, were Minna, his wife; in Wagner’s life. Certainly Hans Mathilde, his muse and perhaps his von Bülow never suspected that lover; Cosima, who would one day music students would one day find become his second wife; and the his wife in all the standard music two husbands—Hans von Bülow, texts under Wagner (née Liszt). who was destined to conduct the The cast was now assembled for premiere of Tristan and Isolde; and Wagner’s private drama, and the Otto Wesendonk, whose money participants all had roles in the never did run out. creation of Tristan and Isolde. For The Bülows—a “most hap- three weeks the scene was remark- pily matched” young couple, ably cozy; this astonishing world in Wagner’s words—left the of art and intellectualism created Wagners to the Wesendonks in a soap-opera setting still strains on September 28. Within days, credibility. Each morning dur- Wagner began writing the music for Tristan, Mathilde becoming Isolde to Wagner’s Tristan as they themselves con- ducted— but evidently never consum- mated—a love affair A musical evening at Bayreuth: Liszt is at the piano; Wagner follows of extra- the score ordinary passion. ing the Bülows’ visit, silence was Mathilde made frequent visits demanded so that Wagner could to Wagner’s workroom to hear finish the text for Tristan and Isolde. the latest sketches for “their” new Later in the day there was music opera, or to show Wagner the making—Hans, a fine pianist, modest poems she was writing. played through the first two acts Wagner set five of them to music of Siegfried, with Wagner taking that winter, giving lasting stature to all the vocal parts—and seemingly mediocre poetry. Two of the songs innocent entertainment. One night were subtitled studies for Tristan 4 and Isolde, and in one, “Traume” he began writing in a journal (Dreams), Wagner discovered the which she saw only years later. famous, slowly shifting colors he He visited the Wesendonks in needed for the great act 2 love September 1859, just after finishing duet. On April 7, 1858, Minna the full score of Tristan and Isolde, Wagner intercepted a letter headed and concluded another financial “Morning confession” from her arrangement with Otto, this time husband to Mathilde; it was rolled for the Ring, but his affair with inside a sketch for the Tristan Mathilde was over. By now Wagner prelude. Minna was so inflamed had separated from Minna, and in that she didn’t care—or notice— November 1862 he saw her for the that the confession dealt with an last time. She died four years later. interpretation of Goethe’s Faust, Now Wagner’s personal drama which Wagner had denounced the moved into high gear. To her night before. Minna confronted husband’s surprise and her father’s her husband first, then Mathilde. disgust, Cosima Liszt von Bülow Wagner insisted on the purity of entered the scene. In Mein Leben the relationship; Mathilde said (My life), Wagner’s preferred Otto had long known about it and version of his life, he says that he accepted it for what it was. The proof, as such, was there in Minna’s hands, for the music of Tristan and Isolde is an ironclad testament of unfulfilled love. Despite the claims of innocence, Wagner broke off relations with the Wesendonks—although Otto’s fortune remained in favor for years. In August, the Wagners gave up the house on the Wesendonks’ grounds—the house he had always called his “Asyl,” or “refuge,” for it clearly was that no longer. Wagner moved on to Venice, and there, in the large, silent rooms of the Palazzo Giustinian on the Grand Canal, he wrote act 2 of Tristan and Isolde. Often he found that he couldn’t bear to compose for more than a few hours each day. Wagner finished the full score of act 2 of Tristan and Isolde on March 18, 1859. He continued Richard and Cosima Wagner, 1872 writing to Mathilde, and when she returned his letters unopened, 5 and Cosima swore eternal fidelity Mein Leben, ensuring that a life in November 1863.
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