Today, I felt the strong urge to write about a piece that has intrigued me for the longest time: Isolde's Liebestod from the opera Tristan & Isolde (composed by Richard Wagner.)
For the past year, I've been playing Wagner-Liszt's piano rendition of Isolde's Liebestod which is what both introduced and drew me to the piece.
For reference, here are links to the opera and piano cover of Isolde's Liebestod.
“Don’t you feel and see it? Do I alone hear this melody, which wonderfully and softly, lamenting delight… invades me” (Isolde’s Liebestod). As Isolde laments about the ethereal melody that only she can hear, her grief and sorrow for her dead husband overwhelms her until she dies of heartbreak beside him. This is the final aria named Isolde’s Liebestod (Isolde’s Love Death) from Richard Wagner’s opera, Tristan & Isolde. In Isolde’s Liebestod, Isolde grapples with the juxtaposing concepts of love and death as they intertwine in her hallucinations. Her love for Tristan is so strong that she seemingly sees him come back to life, showing Wagner’s strong belief that death cannot supersede the power of love. This is further shown when death reunites the two lovers as Wagner-Liszt’s rendition of Isolde’s Liebestod reaches its final moments. Wagner also utilizes a love potion as a metaphor throughout the opera; the love potion was what made Tristan and Isolde fall in love despite their initial enmity for each other. Using the love potion, Wagner compares the potion to the infectious and passionate nature of love that overpowers the will and rationality of people.
On another note, something I find interesting is that the story of Tristan & Isolde was actually the inspiration for Romeo & Juliet; both stories have many similarities such as forbidden love and a tragic ending. While everyone knows about Romeo & Juliet, not many people have heard about the story of Tristan & Isolde though it preceded Romeo & Juliet by more than 400 years. Wagner also had many inspirations when writing the opera of Tristan & Isolde. In particular, he was influenced by his own affair with the poet-writer Mathilde Wesendonck. I think that the parallel connection between Tristan’s and Isolde’s affair and Wagner’s own love life make it possible for Wagner to have incorporated his own emotions in the opera’s music, inspired by his past experiences.
Furthermore, Wagner was significantly influenced by the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, whose ideas are prominent throughout the opera. One example is Schopenhauer’s idea that man can only achieve happiness by letting go of desire. Tristan & Isolde is about desire, what it means in the phenomenal world (the world we are aware of; Schopenhauer’s term for the external world), and its relationship to love. Death was the manifestation of Tristan and Isolde letting go of their desires, and essentially, death was what finally united the two lovers. In the afterlife, their eternal romance ensured that their love for each other became immortal. Wagner also believed Schopenhauer’s doctrine that music holds enormous power as a direct expression of human will, a blind, unconscious striving for existence, reproduction, and life.
Along a similar vein, Wagner writes that “Music is the inarticulate speech of the heart, which cannot be compressed into words, because it is infinite.” What I find magical is that every time I play Wagner-Liszt’s piano arrangement of Isolde’s Liebestod, I am able to fully grasp the passion and limitless nature of music that Wagner speaks of. How are mere chords and melodies able to express Isolde’s eternal suffering and yearning for her love? How does each dynamic and harmony bring out Isolde’s ecstasy when she sees Tristan coming back to life, her despair that the heavenly melody which fills her heart is one that only she can hear?
When I play Isolde’s Liebestod on the piano, each melody line and each musical element brings a story to life. In the shaking tremolos, I can feel the way Isolde trembles as she tenderly kisses Tristan for the last time, the way her voice quivers as she whispers his name, and the way her heart twinges when she feels his pulse flicker. I can feel the tears that stream down her face as she embraces him and sees the color return to his cheeks in the weeping legato slurs that I connect with each finger. In the inflamed, heavy chords that I strike on the keys, I feel Isolde’s agony rushing through my veins like a wildfire, her hoarse scream of misery when Tristan’s revival is nothing more than her hallucination. Through the masterful weaving of dynamics, layers of musical elements, and tear-jerking melodies, Wagner-Liszt breathes life into Isolde’s story of love and death.
Wagner writes: “Only the Strong know Love; only Love can fathom Beauty; only Beauty can fashion Art.” This is why Isolde’s Liebestod is art: it expresses the limitless bounds of desire, the ineffable, infectious power of love, and the indescribable beauty and destructiveness of human will.
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