Post by lindahoyland on Jul 2, 2005 4:23:39 GMT
I was just sorting through some essays I wrote a few years ago,as there is a special offer in my newspaper to have your writing published at a bargain price. I came across this which I wrote about a favourite opera and I think it makes it very clear where I get my inspiration for fanfics from ! 
The first chord of the Prelude is one of the most revolutionary in the history of Western music and immediately plunges the listener into the mystical, beautiful, all consuming world of Wagner’s doomed lovers.
Theirs is so ordinary romance, but the all consuming passion, which some schools of Hindu thought define as the highest form of love, which consumes the participants with its intensity, like a moth drawn into a flame.
Wagner was inspired to compose this opera while in the grip of a hopeless passion for Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of his friend. He was also immersed in the Philosophy of Schopenhauer, whose ideas were similar to those of Buddhism, which sees the individual as trapped in an endless cycle of craving, from birth to death and rebirth, the only escape from which, is the renunciation of all earthly desire in order to reach the bliss of Nirvana.
‘Isolde’ is one of the most complex and fascinating of all opera heroines, as she processes a Shakespearean complexity. Is she a victim or a femme fatale, a healer or would be murderess, a petulant princess or a hostage to political expediency, a loving woman or a witch? She is all this and more, giving the singer who plays her, a wide variety of interpretations to choose from.
At the beginning of the opera, she finds events out of her control, maybe for the first time in her hitherto sheltered life and resorts to the separate measure of a suicide pact with the man she loves and hates at the same time.
Her fury is understandable as Tristan killed her betrothed, sent her his severed head, and then came to her in disguise to be healed before demanding her as a bride for his Uncle.
Yet she is still enough of a spoilt child to tell her maid to prepare the poison, with which she intends them both to die from. Brangäne substitutes a love potion, which frees Tristan and Isolde to reveal their innermost feelings. Though we never know, whether that is from the potion, or the belief that they have only moments to live.
Isolde is very much the protagonist of the story, as Tristan is unable even to die without her.
The love duet transports the listener to a magical world of shifting chromatic harmonies. It begins on a frenzied note of animal like passion, which gives way to the calm beauty of ‘O sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe ‘ and the almost hymn like “ So stürben wir”
I always feel that Isolde’s life could have taken a much less tragic turn had she not met Tristan, whose very name means sorrow, and seemed destined for it from the moment he was born.
He is haunted by his mother’s death in giving birth to him, feels his birth flung him from the enchanted world of ‘Night’ into the cruel realm of ‘Day’.
His wish to return to “Night” permeates the story, from his lack of resistance to taking the drink, which he believes to be poison, and his invitation to Isolde to follow him into the world of “Night” before throwing himself on Melot’s sword.
The anguished delirium in Act Three when he tells Kurwenal he has been where he always was and must always be, in the realm of “Night”, but felt compelled to return the “Day” because Isolde was still in the world of the living shows his deepest desires.
Moreover, they perceive each other as encompassing the world. Yet, she has by this time become so much an ideal that he tears off his bandages and dies, when the real Isolde arrives.
This monologue is one of the most gruelling and demanding in the entire operatic repertoire, and can either come across as boring self pity, or a gripping, harrowing account of the nature of suffering and the meaning of life.
Once, I heard Jeffrey Lawton sing it with such feeling and conviction, that I was in tears.
Isolde, after pouring out her grief for Tristan, and her anger that he has abandoned her, faints then recovers to sing her glorious ‘Liebestod’ in which she has an ecstatic vision of Tristan then feels herself dissolving into an eternal cosmic union before falling lifeless beside him.
The listener usually leaves the theatre feeling both drained and elated at the final mystical consummation of the tragic lovers .In a good performance one can echo their sentiments, of not wanting to let go of the all too fleeting moment of ecstasy when you feel, however briefly, that you have reached a state of cosmic awareness, that can never be put into words.
The sea and what it represents, frames the story, from the journey to Cornwall, where Isolde refers cryptically to her mother once having the ability to conjure up storms, to the end where Tristan awaits death on the Breton coast.
The scientists tell us that life came from the ocean and the unborn child grows in a watery environment. Many of us yearn for the sea, as if we still feel some primeval connection.
“Tristan und Isolde” is an endlessly fascinating, complex and beautiful work, which changed the course of musical history. Both as a simple love story and a complex psychological study, I can listen to this opera again and again. For me, it is a personal love affair, which has endured for over twenty years and I believe will last a lifetime.
(C) RGM
The first chord of the Prelude is one of the most revolutionary in the history of Western music and immediately plunges the listener into the mystical, beautiful, all consuming world of Wagner’s doomed lovers.
Theirs is so ordinary romance, but the all consuming passion, which some schools of Hindu thought define as the highest form of love, which consumes the participants with its intensity, like a moth drawn into a flame.
Wagner was inspired to compose this opera while in the grip of a hopeless passion for Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of his friend. He was also immersed in the Philosophy of Schopenhauer, whose ideas were similar to those of Buddhism, which sees the individual as trapped in an endless cycle of craving, from birth to death and rebirth, the only escape from which, is the renunciation of all earthly desire in order to reach the bliss of Nirvana.
‘Isolde’ is one of the most complex and fascinating of all opera heroines, as she processes a Shakespearean complexity. Is she a victim or a femme fatale, a healer or would be murderess, a petulant princess or a hostage to political expediency, a loving woman or a witch? She is all this and more, giving the singer who plays her, a wide variety of interpretations to choose from.
At the beginning of the opera, she finds events out of her control, maybe for the first time in her hitherto sheltered life and resorts to the separate measure of a suicide pact with the man she loves and hates at the same time.
Her fury is understandable as Tristan killed her betrothed, sent her his severed head, and then came to her in disguise to be healed before demanding her as a bride for his Uncle.
Yet she is still enough of a spoilt child to tell her maid to prepare the poison, with which she intends them both to die from. Brangäne substitutes a love potion, which frees Tristan and Isolde to reveal their innermost feelings. Though we never know, whether that is from the potion, or the belief that they have only moments to live.
Isolde is very much the protagonist of the story, as Tristan is unable even to die without her.
The love duet transports the listener to a magical world of shifting chromatic harmonies. It begins on a frenzied note of animal like passion, which gives way to the calm beauty of ‘O sink hernieder, Nacht der Liebe ‘ and the almost hymn like “ So stürben wir”
I always feel that Isolde’s life could have taken a much less tragic turn had she not met Tristan, whose very name means sorrow, and seemed destined for it from the moment he was born.
He is haunted by his mother’s death in giving birth to him, feels his birth flung him from the enchanted world of ‘Night’ into the cruel realm of ‘Day’.
His wish to return to “Night” permeates the story, from his lack of resistance to taking the drink, which he believes to be poison, and his invitation to Isolde to follow him into the world of “Night” before throwing himself on Melot’s sword.
The anguished delirium in Act Three when he tells Kurwenal he has been where he always was and must always be, in the realm of “Night”, but felt compelled to return the “Day” because Isolde was still in the world of the living shows his deepest desires.
Moreover, they perceive each other as encompassing the world. Yet, she has by this time become so much an ideal that he tears off his bandages and dies, when the real Isolde arrives.
This monologue is one of the most gruelling and demanding in the entire operatic repertoire, and can either come across as boring self pity, or a gripping, harrowing account of the nature of suffering and the meaning of life.
Once, I heard Jeffrey Lawton sing it with such feeling and conviction, that I was in tears.
Isolde, after pouring out her grief for Tristan, and her anger that he has abandoned her, faints then recovers to sing her glorious ‘Liebestod’ in which she has an ecstatic vision of Tristan then feels herself dissolving into an eternal cosmic union before falling lifeless beside him.
The listener usually leaves the theatre feeling both drained and elated at the final mystical consummation of the tragic lovers .In a good performance one can echo their sentiments, of not wanting to let go of the all too fleeting moment of ecstasy when you feel, however briefly, that you have reached a state of cosmic awareness, that can never be put into words.
The sea and what it represents, frames the story, from the journey to Cornwall, where Isolde refers cryptically to her mother once having the ability to conjure up storms, to the end where Tristan awaits death on the Breton coast.
The scientists tell us that life came from the ocean and the unborn child grows in a watery environment. Many of us yearn for the sea, as if we still feel some primeval connection.
“Tristan und Isolde” is an endlessly fascinating, complex and beautiful work, which changed the course of musical history. Both as a simple love story and a complex psychological study, I can listen to this opera again and again. For me, it is a personal love affair, which has endured for over twenty years and I believe will last a lifetime.
(C) RGM
, but hopefully one day I'll get the chance.