Introduction and Libestod of Isolde from Opera "Tristan und Isolde"

Scholars have described Tristan and Isolde as the Master's most radical step towards the music of the future. He composed the opera's libretto from the medieval legend poetically rendered in Gottfried of Strasbourg's 12th-century novel. In timeless myths, such as the story of the impossible love of Tristan and Isolde, Wagner projected the wounds of his time and society. This is not an opera of external action, but of the characters' inner self-disclosure - the suffering of love, the agony of love, the death of love. The composer breaks completely with the traditional operatic structure, the action flows in a continuous stream, built through a complex system of leitmotifs - images and symbols. The melody is close to expressive declamation, and the orchestra plastically builds the complex symphonic fabric of the drama. Wagner's harmonic boldness is unheard of - he uses chromaticisms, bold modulations and chord complexes never seen before, expanding the boundaries of sonic expression. Тhe renowned "Tristan" accord, heard in the first bars of the opera's Introduction (a dissonant chord that hangs and repeats agonisingly without tonal resolution), is imbued with the unbearable tension of a love longing for which there is no hope. In the story of Tristan and Isolde, the artist interwove his own love story with the beautiful Mathilde Wesendonck, wife of his benefactor, the wealthy manufacturer Otto Wesendonck. He gave refuge to the composer and his wife Mina after the suppression of the revolution in Germany in 1848-49. Enthusiastically taking part in the fighting, Wagner was threatened with arrest and fled to Zurich. His relationship with Mathilde began with innocent music lessons; soon the two were overwhelmed by passionate feelings. He dedicates a piano sonata to his beloved, reads her the first pages of the libretto of Tristan and Isolde, and they exchange rapturous letters. In this exciting atmosphere of mutual longing, Mathilde wrote five poems on which Richard composed the magnificent song cycle Wesendonck Lieder Fünf Gedichte für eine Frauenstimme - Five Poems for a Female Voice) during the winter months of 1857-58. A family scandal broke out and the Wagners left for Venice, where the opera Tristan und Isolde was completed. The lines to Mathilde come from there: 'Although it was not given to me to experience the true happiness of love, I nevertheless decided to raise a monument to this beautiful utopia - such a monument in which everything, from the first to the last stroke, would be saturated with love. With the black flag flying in the opera's last act, I will cover myself - and die!". In spite of his conception of the opera as an inseparable organic whole, the composer conducted orchestral excerpts from his music dramas as independent concert works. Thus, in 1862, he created the combination of the Introduction to Tristan and Isolde and the final scene, Isolde's Death of Love. Wagner made two arrangements: one with a soprano part and a purely orchestral version, which was first performed at his own concert in St. Petersburg on 9 March 1863, three years before the opera's premiere (it was on 10 June 1865 at the Royal Court Theatre in Munich, conducted by Hans von Bülow). In the two combined excerpts from Tristan and Isolde he concentrates the starting point of the musical drama, ecstatic longing, with the final motif of the blissful death that brings the two lovers together. In the score of the concerto version he titles it "Liebestod" - Love/Death. After the Introduction, the waves of musical tension rise higher and higher, fiery embraces leading to the climactic moment of the Transfiguration. Only in death do Tristan and Isolde find peace, and their souls join in blissful nirvana.