page_title: Tristan und Isolde
section_title: Recordings
hierarchical_section_title: Tristan und Isolde / Recordings
caption_attribution_description: English: Wagner - Tristan und Isolde, act I - Isolde: "So, this, then, is the end! Tristan, farewell!" Identifier: victrolabookofop00vict (find matches) Title: The Victrola book of the opera&#160;: stories of one hundred and twenty operas with seven-hundred illustrations and descriptions of twelve-hundred Victor opera records Year: 1917 (1910s) Authors: Victor Talking Machine Company Rous, Samuel Holland Subjects: Operas Publisher: Camden, N.J.&#160;: Victor Talking Machine Co. Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: 2-inch, $1.25 The first act shows the deck of the ship which isconveying Isolde and Tristan to Cornwall, she havingaccepted King Marks proposal, made through his 510 was abandoned after fifty-seven rehearsals. Both thePrelude and the Love Death were performed in concertsbefore the production of the opera in Munich. The Pre-lude was played for the first time at Prague, March 12,1859, and again at Leipsic, June 1, 1859. Wagner himselffrequently conducted the Prelude and Love Death inthe concerts given by him in 1863. The opera did not find its way to America untilDecember I, 1886, when the late Albert Niemann madehis American debut as Tristan; and since that time ithas grown steadily in popularity. This great drama of love and hatred, with its won-derful music, is now quite generally admitted to be thefinest of the masters operas. Written at the time ofWagners own love affair (with Mathilde Wesendonck),it is supposed thathe sought to em-phasize the fact Mimin it RENE DALMORES AS TRISTAN Text Appearing After Image: Isolde: So, this, then, is the end! Tristan, farewell! (Tristan and Isolde, Act I.) VICTROLA BOOK OF THE OPERA-TRISTAN AND ISOLDE nephew. During the voyage, however, the refusal of Tristan to seeher, the exultation of the sailors over the killing of Morold (whichfreed Cornwall from its subjection to Isoldes royal father), and de-testation of the loveless marriage she is about to contract, infuriatethe Princess, and she resolves to die and drag Tristan down to deathwith her. She tells Tristan she is aware of his crime in killing herlover, and demands vengeance. He admits her right to kill him andoffers his sword, but she bids her maid, Brangdne, prepare two cupsof poison from her casket. Brangdne, unwilling to see her mistressdie, secretly substitutes for the poison a love potion, the effect ofwhich is immediate, and the lovers sink into each others arms justas the ship approaches the shore and the King arrives to claim his bride.Act II takes place in the garden outside Isoldes chamber Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: Tristan und Isolde, WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered at the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting. Wagner referred to the work not as an opera, but called it "eine Handlung".
  Wagner's composition of Tristan und Isolde was inspired by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, as well as by Wagner's affair with Mathilde Wesendonck. Widely acknowledged as one of the peaks of the operatic repertoire, Tristan was notable for Wagner's unprecedented use of chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, orchestral colour and harmonic suspension.
  The opera was enormously influential among Western classical composers and provided direct inspiration to composers such as Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Benjamin Britten. Other composers like Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, and Igor Stravinsky formulated their styles in contrast to Wagner's musical legacy.
context_section_description: Tristan und Isolde has a long recorded history and most of the major Wagner conductors since the end of the First World War have had their interpretations captured on disc. The limitations of recording technology meant that until the 1930s it was difficult to record the entire opera, however recordings of excerpts or single acts exist going back to 1901, when excerpts of Tristan were captured on the Mapleson Cylinders recorded during performances at the Metropolitan Opera.
  In the years before World War II, Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior were considered to be the prime interpreters of the lead roles, and mono recordings exist of this pair in a number of live performances led by conductors such as Thomas Beecham, Fritz Reiner, Artur Bodanzky and Erich Leinsdorf. Flagstad recorded the part commercially only near the end of her career in 1952, under Wilhelm Furtwängler for EMI, producing a set which is considered a classic recording.
  Following the war, another classic recording is the 1952 performance at the Bayreuth Festival with Martha Mödl and Ramón Vinay under Herbert von Karajan, which is noted for its strong, vivid characterizations and is now available as a live recording. In the 1960s, the soprano Birgit Nilsson was considered the major Isolde interpreter, and she was often partnered with the Tristan of Wolfgang Windgassen. Their performance at Bayreuth in 1966 under the baton of Karl Böhm was captured by Deutsche Grammophon – a performance often hailed as one of the best Tristan recordings.
  Karajan did not record the opera officially until 1971–72. Karajan's selection of a lighter soprano voice (Helga Dernesch) as Isolde, paired with an extremely intense Jon Vickers and the unusual balance between orchestra and singers favoured by Karajan was controversial. In the 1980s recordings by conductors such as Carlos Kleiber, Reginald Goodall and Leonard Bernstein were mostly considered to be important for the interpretation of the conductor, rather than that of the lead performers. The set by Kleiber is notable as Isolde was sung by the famous Mozartian soprano Margaret Price, who never sang the role of Isolde on stage. The same is true for Plácido Domingo, who sang the role of Tristan to critical acclaim in the 2005 EMI release under the baton of Antonio Pappano despite never having sung the role on stage. In the last ten years acclaimed sets include a studio recording with the Berlin Philharmonic by Daniel Barenboim and a live set from the Vienna Staatsoper led by Christian Thielemann.
  There are several DVD productions of the opera including Götz Friedrich's production at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin featuring the seasoned Wagnerians René Kollo and Dame Gwyneth Jones in the title roles. Deutsche Grammophon released a DVD of a Metropolitan Opera performance featuring Jane Eaglen and Ben Heppner, conducted by James Levine, in a production staged by Dieter Dorn and a DVD of the 1993 Bayreuth Festival production with conductor Daniel Barenboim and featuring Waltraud Meier as Isolde and Siegfried Jerusalem as Tristan, staged by Heiner Müller. More recently Barenboim's production at La Scala, Milan, in the production by Patrice Chéreau has also been issued on DVD. There is also a technically flawed, but historically important video recording with Birgit Nilsson and Jon Vickers from a 1973 live performance at the Théâtre antique d'Orange, conducted by Karl Böhm.
  In a world first, the British opera house Glyndebourne made a full digital video download of the opera available for purchase online in 2009. The performance stars Robert Gambill as Tristan, Nina Stemme as Isolde, Katarina Karnéus as Brangäne, Bo Skovhus as Kurwenal, René Pape as King Marke, and Stephen Gadd as Melot, with Jiří Bělohlávek as the conductor, and was recorded on 1 and 6 August 2007.
  A performance typically lasts approximately 3 hours and 50 minutes.
caption: Photo from a 1917 production
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