Tristan und Isolde
Wagner finished the music of Tristan und Isolde in 1859. Tristan und Isolde had its premiere at the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater on 10 June 1865.
In the tenor Ludwig Schnorr Wagner found his ideal Tristan. Schnorr died only two weeks after the premiere. Wagner declared that he never would allow the opera to be performed again. The next time Tristan und Isolde was produced was in 1876 in Berlin. The first performance of Tristan und Isolde in Bayreuth was in 1886.
Tristan und Isolde was produced in the following cities the first years after the world premiere in 1865
| 1876 | Berlin |
| 1882 | London |
| 1883 | Wien |
| 1886 | Praha and Bayreuth Festival (Felix Mottl) See all those who have conducted Tristan at Bayreuth here |
| 1903 | Wien (Gustav Mahler) |
| 1909 | Petersburg |
- All Tristan conductors at the Bayreuth Festival
- The titles of Richard Wagner's operas in different languages
- See different Liebestod versions
Said about Tristan und Isolde
"I fear the opera will be banned – unless the whole thing is parodied in a bad performance –: only mediocre performances can save me! Perfectly good ones will be bound to drive people mad, – I cannot imagine it otherwise."
Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck
My great love is Tristan und Isolde, and for that Wagner will have his place in the history of European culture because there he drops all his ideological bullshit, and all his dangerous sides. And finally he is really concentrating on his music and his poetry. And here he develops all his greatness. There is the Wagner that I am looking for.
Gottfried Wagner, TV documentary
"Tristan is not about 'being', it’s about 'becoming'. And it’s not an opera about love, but about death. The fear of death. This is the motor of the opera. There’s nothing more democratic than death."
Daniel Barenboim before his Met debut with Tristan und Isolde
Singing Isolde
"Singing Isolde requires a sort of state of being. You have to enter the Tristan und Isolde world completely. You have to give it 100% all the time. It's a big journey. It's a marathon."
Nina Stemme (The Guardian)
"You have to work yourself up into a lather at the start. But other times it's like flying. It's my favourite Wagner role, but you have to know what you're doing. You can blast yourself into bits in the first act and have nothing left for the third. It's very varied. It's like owning a huge chest of drawers and opening the one you need at each different stage."
Anne Evans (The Guardian)
"It's not one of those roles where you can just come on stage and turn on like a tap. You have to be revved up well before it starts. She goes off like a firecracker. But you still have to be focused at the end, when you have to produce your best singing of the evening."
Susan Bullock (The Guardian)