Home Mushrooms The most famous operas in the world: Tristan und Isolde, R. Wagner. Tristan and Isolde is the greatest hymn to the glory of love. Opera by Richard Wagner Libretto tristan and isolde synopsis

Mushrooms

The most famous operas in the world: Tristan und Isolde, R. Wagner. Tristan and Isolde is the greatest hymn to the glory of love. Opera by Richard Wagner Libretto tristan and isolde synopsis

Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde has become a true classic in its genre. The opera consists of 3 acts.

Step 1

Irish princess Isolde, married to King Mark, is sailing on a ship to Cornwall. Tristan is driving her. Isolde's servant, Brangen, is surprised by the reluctance of his mistress to marry the king, since he believes that there is no better fate. The fact is that Isolde and Tristan love each other, but not one of them knows that this love is mutual. Tristan wishes the best for Isolde and wants to arrange her marriage to the king.

Tristan's servant, Courwenal, arrogantly argues that after the victory over Ireland, Isolde is no more than a prisoner, and Tristan should not have anything to do with her. During Isolde's conversation with Brangena, it is revealed that Tristan is a knight whom the princess wanted to avenge for the murder of her fiancé, but instead healed of his wounds. Offended by the fact that Tristan wants to marry her to the king, Isolde demands to give her two bowls of poison. She deceives Tristan by telling him that these are cups of wine and that the princess wants to drink them in honor of reconciliation. Tristan guesses about her true intentions and, in the hope of imminent death, they both stop hiding their feelings and throw themselves into each other's arms. At this time, the ship lands on the land of King Mark.

Step 2

The court together with the king go hunting. A torch is burning in the garden near Isolde's chambers - this is a sign for Tristan, who was in a hurry to meet with Isolde that night. Tristan was supposed to come to her after the torch was extinguished. Isolde orders Brangena to put it out. But the servant warns her mistress that the knight Melot is closely watching Tristan and in which case he will tell the king about everything.

Isolde is not worried about this: she thinks that Melot is Tristan's faithful friend and will never betray him, because it was he who gathered everyone to hunt. The princess extinguishes the torch herself, and Brangena is sent to watch. Lovers meet. Later, Kurwenal runs in and tells Tristan to save himself as soon as possible, but he does not have time. The king, Melot and his retinue burst into the room. Melot accuses Tristan of the crime he committed. King Mark accuses his nephew of terrible ingratitude. Tristan asks Isolde a question if she can leave with him. At this time, Melot kills him.

Step 3

Courwenal brought Tristan to his castle in Brittany. The servant knows for sure that the only doctor who can save his master is Isolde. Together with the shepherd, they are waiting for the ship on which the princess is to arrive. The shepherd plays a mournful melody. Tristan awakens, the shepherd's melody evokes dark thoughts in him. He wants to die, but he cannot do it without Isolde. Tristan faints.

Immediately the shepherd plays a cheerful melody - the ship has arrived. The servant runs to meet the long-awaited guest. Tristan, forgetting about all the wounds, rushes to her to die. The shepherd plays the following tune, indicating that Mark's ship has arrived. From Brangena, he learned that the lovers drank poison to die together, and now he wants to make Isolde free. But, only seeing the king, Isolde in anguish rushes to the body of Tristan and dies. King Mark blesses dead lovers.

What does opera teach? The fact that true love cannot be separated. Tristan and Isolde were able to keep their feelings and died together. And King Mark, realizing his mistake, was able to let Isolde go and, like a good man, wanted to bless them, but it was too late.

Picture or drawing Wagner - Tristan and Isolde

Other retellings and reviews for the reader's diary

Summary of the Legend of the city of Kitezh
Creation is a work that tells about the events that actually happened in Ancient Russia, set out in the form of a chronicle.
Summary of Belyaev Ariel
Ariel is a blue-eyed, fair-haired young man who studied at the Indian school of Dandrat. It was a secret school where priests of religious sects were trained. The pupils went through hell. Their psyche was suppressed by hypnosis and many of them died or went crazy.
Summary Inexhaustible bowl Shmelev
This is a sublime story about the life of a young icon painter, about overcoming the hardships of a difficult life and comprehending spiritual joy through a great feeling of love.
Summary of the Man in Chekhov's Case
The protagonist of the story, Belikov, is a teacher of the ancient Greek language in a gymnasium. His image is collective, typical for society. In the character and appearance of the protagonist, all the features of appearance are most pronounced
Summary Death of Tarelkin Sukhovo-Kobylin
The work continues the story of a certain Tarelkin, which was mentioned earlier in the book "Krechinsky's Wedding". And it all starts with the fact that our character did not receive any money for conducting numerous cases,

On the libretto (in German) by the composer, based on old legends.

Characters:

KING MARK CORNWALL (bass)
TRISTAN, his nephew (tenor)
KURVENAL, Tristana's squire (baritone)
Izolda, Irish princess (soprano)
BRANGENA, Isolde's maidservant (mezzo-soprano)
MELOT, courtier of the king (tenor)
YOUNG SEAMAN (tenor)
FEED (baritone)
SHEPHERD (tenor)

Time of action: the legendary times of King Arthur.
Scene: Cornwall, Brittany and the sea.
First performance: Munich, Court Theater, June 10, 1865.

It is generally accepted - and there is every reason for this - that Tristan and Isolde is the greatest hymn ever composed to the glory of pure erotic love. The history of the creation of this opera is closely connected with this passion. For most of the time that Wagner wrote Tristana and Isolde, he lived in the house of the wealthy Zurich silk merchant Otto Wesendonk; Wagner was in love with the owner's young wife, Matilda. Later, when the opera was written, at least twenty-four rehearsals were held for its production at the Vienna Court Opera, but the production was eventually canceled. The reason, perhaps, was that it was too difficult and new style for the troupe - at least that's what it was officially announced. However, love and politics (two great driving forces in Wagner's life) also played an important role in this development. The troupe formed two camps: the provagner and anti-wagner camps. The first was headed by a soprano assigned to the role of Isolde - Louise Doustman Meyer. She, however, refused her assistance in the production of the opera when she learned about Wagner's love affair with her younger sister.

Even before the Vienna Court Opera began to stage Tristana and Isolde, Wagner attempted to get the opera performed in Strasbourg, Karlsruhe, Paris, Weimar, Prague, Hanover and even in Rio de Janeiro, where it was supposed to be performed in Italian ! None of these attempts were successful: the opera was never staged anywhere - mainly for political reasons. Finally, six years after the end of work on the opera, the premiere took place. It was carried out under the patronage of a large, albeit extremely unbalanced and impulsive friend of Wagner, King Ludwig II of Bavaria.

The premiere was conducted by Hans von Bülow, an ardent promoter of Wagnerian music. Two months before the premiere, Frau von Bülow had a daughter, whom she named Isolde. It is very likely that at that time the conductor did not yet know that the composer, in addition to being the girl's godfather, was also her real father. In fact, Cosima von Bülow (the illegitimate daughter of Franz Liszt) gave birth to three children to Richard Wagner before Hans eventually divorced her and she married the composer.

There is no need to find in the opera the reflection of many of Wagner's own love passions for other people's wives - the love of Tristan and Isolde is much more idealized and pure than any page of the composer's shocking biography. Basically it is a very simple fairy tale, and the score, perhaps more than any other Wagner's one, completes his theory of what musical drama (as opposed to traditional "opera") is supposed to be. Wagner refuses to clearly divide the action into a sequence of numbers. In this opera, the world first became acquainted with a musical drama, in which the orchestra undoubtedly plays a dominant role, commenting through the developed system of leitmotifs every psychological and dramatic move in the development of the plot. Here Wagner realized his idea of an “endless melody”, creating a very special style of arias, duets, quartets, with which everyone is familiar ever since. This caused a fierce war of critics, which has not subsided to this day.

INTRODUCTION

Wagner also refused to clearly define the key in which the music sounds here. The initial key mark indicates that the intro is written in C major (or A minor); it begins with a piece of melody that can also be considered F major (or D minor), and before the second measure ends, we arrive at the dominant seventh chord in A major. At this point, we are also presented with two of the main motives of the work, so intimately dissolving in each other that some commentators call them, respectively, "Tristan" and "Isolde" motives.

This concludes my musical and technical comments. This introduction is, as everyone knows, one of the most expressive, sensual and moving sound love poems that have ever been written.

ACTION I

Isolde is an Irish princess, daughter of the famous witch, she perfectly knows poisons, drugs and the medieval art of healing. When the curtain rises, we find her on the ship. She is being taken, against her will, to be married off to King Mark of Cornwall. The man taking her to Cornwall, the captain of the ship - Tristan, the nephew of King Mark. Isolde, in a long and indignant tale, explains to the maid Brangen the reason for her anger. From this story it becomes clear that Isolde had a fiancé named Morold, whom Tristan challenged to fight in a duel to decide whether Cornwall would continue to pay tribute to Ireland. As a result, Tristan won. But he himself was wounded. Disguised as a harper, he came to Isolde's castle. Isolde, mastering the art of healing, healed him and returned his life, and considering him a harper named Tantris, as he called himself. But one day, on a sword that belonged to a wounded man, she found a notch that was exactly the same shape as a piece of steel found in the severed head of Morold, which the Cornish people had sent to Ireland shortly before. So she knew who this harper really was. She was ready to kill Tristan and had already raised her sword over him, but he looked so soulfully into her eyes that passionate love for him flared up in her. But now, by order of his uncle, he is taking her to marry him. No wonder she is indignant!

Isolde sends for Tristan, but he, unable to leave the captain's bridge, sends his squire Kurwenal in his place. Curwenal, this uncouth and rude baritone (at the same time truly devoted to Tristan), very unceremoniously informs Isolde that Tristan will not come, and together with the rowers sings a mocking ballad about Tristan's victory over Morold. This completely infuriates Isolde, and she decides to kill Tristan and herself, just not to marry Mark, whom, by the way, she has never seen. She orders Brangena to prepare a poisonous potion and again summons Tristan, declaring that she refuses to go ashore if he does not come to her. This time he appears, as the ship is about to land on the shore. She reminds him with a sharp reproach that he killed her fiancé. Tristan, in atonement for his guilt, offers her his sword so that she would kill him. Instead, Isolde offers him a drink. Tristan accepts the cup, not doubting that it contains poison. But Brangena, without saying anything to Isolde, changed the poison for a love drink. Tristan drinks the cup halfway in one gulp, and then Isolde snatches it from him and drinks the cup to die with him. But the result is completely unexpected. For a very long time they look into each other's eyes (the music from the introduction is playing in the orchestra at this time). And suddenly, as if distraught, they rush into each other's arms, uttering ecstatic words of delight.

But suddenly the joyful singing of the sailors is heard - the shore appeared on the horizon. Courwenal rushes in and announces that a wedding procession led by King Mark is approaching. The lovers come out to meet him, completely unprepared to meet the king.

ACTION II

The orchestral introduction conveys Isolde's excitement. The curtain rises and we see the garden in front of King Mark's castle. Isolde's rooms open out here. (Whether or not Isolde's marriage ceremony with King Mark took place between the first and second acts, Wagner does not clarify in any way; it is enough that Isolde considers herself - and so everyone else thinks - the king's bride). The king goes hunting, and at the very beginning of this action we hear the sounds of a hunting horn behind the stage. But while the king is hunting, Tristan and Isolde decided to meet in secret. A torch is burning on the castle wall. When it goes out, it will be a sign for Tristan to come to the garden.

Brangena, Isolde's maid, fears a conspiracy by the king. She is convinced that Melot, a Cornish knight considered Tristan's best friend, will betray them. She advises Isolde not to extinguish the torch and thereby not give a sign to Tristan to come to her, while the sounds of the hunting horn are still heard and the king with his retinue is close. But Isolde burns with impatience. She refuses to believe that Melot can be so devious. She blows out the torch, climbs several steps and, illuminated by the bright light of the moon, waves her light scarf, giving Tristan such a sign to come to her.

The orchestra expresses feverish excitement with sounds, and Tristan bursts onto the stage. "Beloved Isolde!" - he exclaims, and Isolde echoes him: "Beloved!" This is the beginning of a huge love duo known as "Liebesnacht" (Night of Love), a long, heartfelt, moving expression of love, its transformative power - a love that prefers night to day (“Come down to earth night of love”), love that prefers death of life ("And so we will die to live forever"). At the end of this duet they sing the well-known and extraordinarily beautiful melody "Liebestod", and just at the moment when the development culminates, Brangena, who has been on the alert all this time, lets out a shrill cry. The king and his retinue unexpectedly returned from the hunt. They were brought back by one who was considered a friend of Tristan, Melot, who himself has a secret love for Isolde and, thus, acts from the most reprehensible motives. The main feeling of the noble king is sadness, sadness that the honor of Tristan, his beloved nephew, has been tarnished. He sings about it in a very long monologue; Isolde, deeply embarrassed, turns away.

At the end of King Mark's monologue, Tristan asks Isolde if she will follow him to the land where there is eternal night. She agrees. And then, in a short duel with Melot, Tristan, exposing his chest in front of him, deliberately opens himself up for a blow. King Mark intervenes and pushes Melot away, preventing him from killing Tristan. Tristan, badly wounded, falls to the ground. Isolde falls on his chest.

ACTION III

Tristan is transported to his castle in Brittany; this was done by his faithful squire Kurwenal. Here he lies, wounded and sick, in front of the castle. He is waiting for a ship - a ship that is carrying Isolde, who wants to sail to him to heal him. Behind the stage, a shepherd plays a very sad melody on his pipe. A sad melody, a fever of illness, the tragedy of his life - all this together clouded the mind of poor Tristan. His thought wanders somewhere far away: he tells Kurwenal about the tragic fate of his parents, about what torments tormented him. All these themes (and others as well) pass through his fevered mind as he lies there, and Kurwenal tries - in vain - to relieve his suffering.

Suddenly the shepherd played a different melody. Now it sparkles in a major key. A ship appeared on the horizon. He then disappears, then appears again, finally docks, and a few moments later, Isolde swiftly descends ashore. She was almost too late to find her lover alive. In passionate excitement, he rips off the bandage and, bleeding, falls dead into the arms of Isolde. She bends mournfully over the dead body.

Another ship is mooring to the shore. This is King Mark's ship with his retinue. The villain Melot also sailed here with him. Mark has arrived to forgive the lovers, but Kurwenal is unaware of this intention. He sees in the retinue only the enemies of his master. Loyal to Tristan, he enters into a duel with Melot and kills him. But he himself receives a mortal wound and falls, dying at the feet of his master. Then Isolde lifts the dead body of Tristan. Transformed by her feelings, she sings "Liebestod" and at the end breathes her last breath herself. Mark blesses the deceased, and the opera ends with two quiet long chords in B flat major.

Henry W. Simon (translated by A. Maykapar)

Wagner often refers to landscapes, elements and images of nature. His penchant for natural symbolism gives rise to magnificent and downright grandiose paintings. From the Swiss mountains to the stormy northern seas, to the sun-drenched southern vegetation, everything attracted this man with the taste of a director and landscape painter, like some sensual magnet, overgrown with various ideas, including abstract and mystical (in Parsifal, Christ, emitting his spirit on cross, dies against the backdrop of awakening nature). In Tristana and Isolde, this poem about love, about feverish passion, the brainchild of a blind fate, high and unforgiving, the main character among the background characters is the sea, personifying superhuman passions and impulses. The sea covers the soul with its restless waves, shaken to the very depths by indomitable passions. The earth is not shown, while the sea of passion draws the listener from one storm to the next. In rare moments, when it moderates its onslaught and calms down, painful memories emerge from the darkness of the night. “For the first time I breathe this unclouded, clean, sweet air ... When in the evening I sail in a gondola on the Lido, I hear the sound of trembling strings around me, reminding me of the gentle, long sounds of the violin, which I love so much and with which I once compared you; you can easily imagine how I feel in the moonlight, at sea! " This is what Wagner wrote in a letter from 1858 from Venice to Matilda Lukmeier, the wife of the wealthy merchant Otto Wesendonk. A romantic relationship with Matilda, interrupted by Wagner's flight to Venice, inspired the composer to create an opera about painful love, full of nostalgia for something that not only became a thing of the past, but was not experienced and known to the end, and from which remained feelings of unquenched desire and endless longing ... Libretto and music were written between August 1857 and August 1859; the premiere took place in Munich only in 1865 thanks to the support of Ludwig II of Bavaria. In Italy, the opera was first staged in 1888 in Bologna at the Teatro Comunale.

Mystical and philosophical constructions are layered on the biographical basis of the plot about lovers through the fault of the "magic drink". Such a carnal, sensual passion, elevated to the absolute, loses the character of sin or criminal pleasure (like any pleasure) in order to acquire the features of the cosmic law, according to which Tristan and Isolde love like gods, and not like people. Associated with this tension of passion is the use of an endless melody, an elusive, wavering, winding vocal and harmonic line that finds no support or shelter anywhere but itself, and which has nothing but the impossibility of leaving itself. "Child! this "Tristan" is becoming something terrible! .. I'm afraid the opera will be banned. Unless a poor performance will turn everything into a parody ... Only a mediocre performance can save me, an entirely good performance can only drive the audience crazy - I can't think otherwise ... This is what I have reached! Alas for me! And this is what I have put the most passion into! " - Wagner wrote all the same Wesendonk. Flexible modulations and chromatic transitions, which due to their sharpening will become legendary, spread as "infection" (to use the word Nietzsche). In the vortex of sound, traditional forms weaken, disintegrate to reunite in the narrative chain, which is a continuous series of conscious and unconscious states.On the surface of various rhythmic and melodic flows, key themes are worn: in addition to the themes of love and death, there are many others here connecting fragments of a moving mosaic that depicts various manifestations of love feelings. love drink, drink of death, magic vessel, liberation in death, sea, characteristics of various states of mind of Tristan, themes of the day, impatience, passion, love impulse, song of love, call to the night, the theme of Mark's suffering, depiction of Courwenal's mental states, the theme of Brangena's encouragement - in time the duet of the second act (the largest vocal number in the entire history of the opera). These leitmotifs appear and disappear, like glare on the waves, their beauty is that they are recognizable, even when they dissipate. Due to the richness of various musical possibilities, these leitmotifs are short-lived, like other stylistic characteristics: musical ideas, consonances, dissonances, interval changes. And not so much because (as it will be in the tetralogy and in "Parsifal") that the thematic fragment is ready to almost dissolve in a complex search for rational or intuitive meanings, but because of passion, unusual feelings that seek to absorb all the remnants of logic and become new logic, outside time and space. While the orchestra is notable for unprecedented mobility, is colored with a single, fiery-ashy timbre and rather hints at an erotic theme than depicts it, the vocal part prefers “short and humble calls” (as Franco Serpa writes well). And only in the duet is the lyrical construction ascending, the stately, with some concessions to sentimentality, the anthem of the night sounds. The death of Isolde will demand the last tribute from the orchestra in order to crown her posthumous marriage with a whole sound, in which the voices of a musical instrument cannot be distinguished. This is how the last sacrifice is made - to the fear evoked in the soul of a selfish person by all beauty: too late the good King Mark appeared with his wise word.

G. Marchesi (translated by E. Greceanîi)

History of creation

The legend of Tristan and Isolde is of Celtic origin. It probably came from Ireland and enjoyed the widest popularity in all countries of medieval Europe, spreading in many variants (its first literary adaptation - a Franco-Breton novel - dates back to the 12th century). Over the centuries, it has acquired various poetic details, but the meaning remained the same: love is stronger than death. Wagner, however, interpreted this legend differently: he created a poem about a painful all-consuming passion, which is stronger than reason, a sense of duty, family obligations, which overturns the usual notions, breaks ties with the outside world, with people, with life. In accordance with the composer's intention, the opera is marked by the unity of dramatic expression, tremendous tension, tragic intensity of feelings.

Wagner was very fond of Tristan, considered it his best work. The creation of the opera is associated with one of the most romantic episodes in the composer's biography - with his passion for Matilda Wesendonck, the wife of a friend and patron, who, despite her ardent love for Wagner, managed to subdue her sense of duty to her husband and family. Wagner called "Tristan" a monument to the deepest unrequited love. The autobiography of this opera helps to understand the composer's unusual interpretation of a literary source.

Wagner got acquainted with the legend of Tristan and Isolde back in the 1940s, the idea for the opera appeared in the fall of 1854 and completely captured the composer in August 1857, forcing him to interrupt work on the tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen. The text was written in a single burst, in three weeks; the composing of music began in October. The work was carried out with long interruptions, the opera was completed in 1859. The premiere took place on June 10, 1865 in Munich.

Music

Tristan and Isolde is the most distinctive of Wagner's operas. There is little external action, stage movement in it - all attention is focused on the experiences of the two heroes, on showing the shades of their painful, tragic passion. Music, full of sensual longing, flows in a non-stop stream, without being divided into separate episodes. The psychological role of the orchestra is extremely great: for revealing the emotional experiences of the heroes, it is no less important than the vocal part.

The mood of the entire opera is determined by the orchestral introduction; here short motives, sometimes mournful, sometimes enthusiastic, always tense, passionate, nowhere giving comfort, are continually replacing each other. The introduction is open and goes directly into the music of the first act.

The motives of the introduction permeate the orchestral fabric of the first act, revealing the state of mind of Tristan and Isolde. They are contrasted with song episodes that serve as a background for psychological drama. This is the opening act of the young sailor's song "I Look at the Sunset", which sounds from afar, without orchestral accompaniment. The ironic song of Kurwenal is energetic, courageous, picked up by the chorus "So tell Isolde you." The central characteristic of the heroine is contained in her large story "A boat, driven by a wave, sailed to the Irish rocks by the sea"; anxiety and confusion reign here. The beginning of the dialogue between Tristan and Isolde “What will be your order?” Was marked with similar sentiments; at the end of it, the motives of love longing sound again.

In the second act, the main place is occupied by the huge love duet of Tristan and Isolde, framed by scenes with Brangena and King Mark. The orchestral introduction conveys Isolde's eager animation. The same mood prevails in the dialogue between Isolde and Brangena, accompanied by a distant call of the hunting horns. The scene with Tristan is rich in contrasts of experiences; its beginning speaks of the stormy joy of the long-awaited meeting; then there are memories of the suffering experienced in separation, the curse of day and light; the central episode of the duet - broad, slow, passionate tunes glorifying night and death: the first - "Come down to earth, night of love" with a flexible, free rhythm and tense sounding unstable melody - was borrowed by Wagner from the year he wrote the beginning of work on "Tristan" romance "Dreams" to words by Matilda Wesendonk. It is complemented by the call of Brangena - a warning of danger - here the composer revives the form of "morning songs", beloved by the troubadours of the Middle Ages. One of Wagner's best melodies - "So, let us die to live forever" - colorful, endlessly unfolding, striving upward. A big build-up leads to a climax. The final scene highlights Mark's mournful, nobly restrained complaint, “Have you really saved? Do you think so? " and a small chanting farewell of Tristan and Isolde "In that distant country there is no sun in the sky", where the echoes of a love duet sound.

The third act is framed by two expanded monologues - the wounded Tristan at the beginning and the dying Isolde at the end. The orchestral introduction, using the melody of the romance "In the Greenhouse" to the words of Matilda Wesendonck, embodies Tristan's grief and anguish. As in the first act, the harrowing emotional experiences of the heroes are set off by clearer song episodes. Such is the sad tune of the English horn (shepherd's flute), which opens the action and repeatedly returns in Tristan's monologue; such are the energetic speeches of Kurwenal, accompanied by a marching orchestral theme. They are contrasted with Tristan's short remarks, uttered as if in oblivion. The hero's great monologue is based on abrupt mood swings. It begins with the mournful phrases “Do you think so? I know better, but what - you cannot know ”, where echoes of his farewell to Isolde from the second act are heard. Gradually, the drama grows, despair sounds in Tristan's speeches, suddenly it is replaced by joy, stormy glee, and again hopeless melancholy: "How can you understand, an old, sad tune." This is followed by light lyrical melodies. The play of the English horn serves as a dramatic turning point in the act. At the moment of Tristan's death, the theme of love longing, which opened the opera, is repeated again. Isolde's expressive complaint "I am here, I am here, dear friend" is full of dramatic exclamations. She prepares the final scene - Isolde's death. Here the melodies of the love duet of the second act develop widely and freely, acquiring a transformed, enlightened ecstatic sound.

M. Druskin

"Tristan and Isolde" is the most original creation of Wagner the poet: it amazes with its simplicity and artistic integrity. The multi-layered plot lines of the ancient legend, which dates back to the XII century, are reduced to several scenes, a large number of participants in the drama - to two main characters and three or four who perform secondary functions.

In the center of Act I - the fatal mistake of Tristan and Isolde, instead of a bowl of poison, they drained a goblet with a magic drink of love (the scene of the action is the deck of a ship on the high seas). In the center of Act II there is the best in the opera, a symphonically unfolded love scene (the scene of the action is a shady park in the possession of King Mark, whose wife Isolde is; here the king overtakes the lovers, and one of the courtiers mortally wounds Tristan). Act III, the most integral one (in Tristan's castle on the seashore), is imbued with the agonizing expectation of meeting and death of the heroes of the work.

The surrounding life seems to be heard from afar to the consciousness of lovers: such is the song of the helmsman, the exclamations of the sailors in Act I, or the sounds of hunting horns in Act II, or the lonely pipe of a shepherd in III. "The depths of inner spiritual movements" - this is what, according to Wagner, is expressed in his poem. The composer, first of all, strived to convey the diversity of the feeling of love - longing, anticipation, pain, despair, thirst for death, enlightenment, hope, exultation - all these shades get amazingly rich and powerful expression in music.

That is why "Tristan" is Wagner's most inactive opera: the "event" side in it is minimized in order to give more scope for identifying psychological states. And even if an important dramatically effective moment arises, and it is Melot's duel with Tristan (in Act II), then Wagner characterizes it briefly and sparingly, while the love scene preceding the duel takes up almost half of the act.

It would be wrong, however, to believe that Wagner completely isolates his characters from life. Yes, outlining the external environment of the action will interest him less and less. But in the drama of Wagner's operas, the significance of pictures of nature and pictorial sketches correspondingly increases. Seeking to penetrate into the essence of the folk myth, to discover in it something that is not associated with "accidental", as Wagner put it, historical layers, he shows the "true man" in spiritual communication with nature, in an indissoluble connection with it. The role of this landscape factor is especially great in the drama of the Der Ring des Nibelungen tetralogy. But in "Tristan" it is also significant.

The opera takes place mainly in the evening, night hours. For romantics, night is a symbol of feelings freed from the fetters of reason. It is at night that elemental forces awaken; night hours are full of fantasy, poetic charm of vague, mysterious movements in nature, in the human soul. The clarity of the day is alien to romantics, it seems to them seeming, because the sun blinds the eye, does not allow to see the innermost that is revealed only in the twilight time (This is the fundamental difference between romantics and the classics of the Viennese school. The light of reason, in the view of the latter, brought up on the philosophy of the Enlightenment, dispels the darkness of prejudices and superstitions. Therefore, for example, the ideological concept of "The Magic Flute" by Mozart is polar opposite to "Tristan": a dazzling Sun shine kingdom of wisdom Sarastro opposes the personification of evil - the Queen Nights.) ... That is why the German romantic poet Novalis sang the hymns of the night with such inspiration. Among the composers of the 19th century, no one sang "night romance" as much as Wagner, and above all in "Tristan".

The music of the opera - this gigantic vocal-symphonic poem about the destructive power of an all-consuming passion - is marked by the unity of dramatic expression, tremendous tension of feelings; incessant excitement engulfed the entire work. Deep psychologism, "hypertrophied sensitivity" (expression by Romain Rolland) - this is what is characteristic of "Tristan". This dominant state is succinctly presented in the orchestral introduction to the opera, in which, as in a clot, its content is conveyed. The introduction is a cyclopean, unified musical period, the dynamics of development of which follows, as it were, in a circle, returning to the starting point at the moment of culmination. "All in vain! The heart falls powerlessly to dissolve in longing, ”Wagner explains the meaning of this introduction.

From the very beginning of the introduction, a feeling of extreme tension of feelings is created. The first fourteen to fifteen measures represent a wide dominant prediction (the main key of the intro is a minor, only in the conclusion C-dur and the minor of the same name appear). Stubbornly avoiding the tonic triad, in the development of "endless melody" concealing the edges of the cadence, using altered harmonies, sequences, incessantly modulating, Wagner exacerbates the limotonal movement to the utmost. In the initial theme, the unstable harmony that is resolved into the dominant seventh chord is of decisive importance, which further enhances the feeling of agonizing tension. (This terzquart chord with a lowered fifth ( f) and non-chord tone ( gis), going to the seventh, is the leitharmony of "Tristan", permeating the entire fabric of the score.)

It is carried out three times (the fourth, incomplete conduct sounds an echo of the previous ones), after which the second theme of love languor arises:

The development of these themes (after the 16th bar) gives rise to a more coherent dynamic wave leading to the A-major. Its top is emphasized by the appearance of the third, frenziedly enthusiastic theme (bars 64-65):

From here begins the next, highest and most intense wave of dynamics (from 74 to 84 bars), the culmination of which is at the same time the culmination point of the entire introduction! - signifies a breakdown: a return to the initial state (chord f-ces-es-as enharmonically identical to the chord f-h-dis-gis, with which the introduction begins).

The considered introduction concentrates the typical features of the opera score. Noting that the harmony of "Tristan" in places reaches "striking beauty and plasticity", Rimsky-Korsakov pointed out that music as a whole "represents almost exclusively exquisite style taken to the extreme tensions". This tension, according to Rimsky-Korsakov's apt definition, generates a "monotony of luxury."

So in the music of Wagner, along with “ Siegfried", Includes" tristan" Start. And if the first is associated with the deepening of objective, national-national features in Wagner's music, then the second causes an intensification of subjective, subtly psychological moments. To one degree or another, these two principles coexist in works written in the post-Hengrin period. "Tristan" occupies a separate place in this respect: there are almost no "Siegfried" motives in it.

Despite this limited content, Wagner achieved a great power of expression within the framework of his task. He discovered not only new artistic means for conveying complex psychological shades of emotional experiences, but also further developed methods symphonization opera, which contributed to the creation of a flexible and capacious content, large through forms. The best excerpts from the opera are conquered with truthful drama: the orchestral introduction and the final scene of Isolde's death. These two large passages form an arch that frames the entire piece. (They are often performed in succession in the form of two symphonic pieces.) Their music complements each other: the theme of the introduction, as the drama develops, gives way to the leading theme of the scene of Isolde's death:

The latter theme takes on dominant importance in the opera, beginning with the love duet, which is the center of Act II. This is “a giant forest melody,” Wagner said about the music of the duet. “You will not remember his melody, but it will never be forgotten; in order to awaken her in the soul, one must go to the forest on a summer evening ... ".

Wagner Sidorov Alexey Alekseevich

"TRISTAN AND Izolda"

Zurich remained Wagner's residence for ten years. Wagner worked extensively as a theorist, as a poet and as a musician; he recreated his worldview; as a person, he experienced sorrow and joy, friendship and love. The consciousness that he was "chosen" was born in him. In this he convinces his contemporaries. It was during these years that his name began to become a slogan. The musical youth of Germany with delight reaches out to him, in distant Russia, in the person of Alexander Serov, he has a student and apologist. Liszt is not afraid to take on as many troubles and dislikes as he pleases in his "Wagner apostleship." And he himself remains the same - hot, impulsive, naive and practical, selfish and at the same time capable of tender friendship. He lives on a subsidy from friends, on "alms" - and at the same time believes that this is the way it should be - for is he not giving them the best he can in return? He strives for communication, for humanity, for the collective - and at the same time realizes that his art is ahead of modernity, that he is surrounded by misunderstanding, indifference or enmity.

Beginning in 1850, the Swiss government deletes Wagner's name from the list of emigrants and regards him as its citizen. But Wagner does not care about his citizenship. The latest studies of Wagner's biography lead to the conviction that Wagner remained a rebel and a man of revolutionary sympathies all this time.

In Germany, at this time, the production of his operas multiplied, the most popular of his work was "Tannhäuser". - After the Liszt production in Weimar, Lohengrin was staged mainly on provincial stages. The composer's financial situation has improved. He buys himself new furniture, some unusual curtains on the windows, his wife has new elegant dresses, although Minna would, of course, like to save, and not spend money. Wagner puts on a light pink hat for himself. In a portrait made of him by his Zurich acquaintance, Mrs. Shtokar-Escher, he is sitting in an armchair, with a cloak romantically draped over his shoulders. He was not handsome, but his large skull, his eyes and the mouth of a spoiled child and stubborn, give him a strange charm. Wagner had been ill all these years, and he himself had significantly injured himself with his immoderate "hydrotherapy". His morbidity is due to nervousness, and only in 1856, in the sanatorium of Dr. Vallant, near Geneva, where Liszt sent him, Wagner finally begins to feel healthy.

He travels a lot in Switzerland, wanders with his friends in glaciers. Minna Wagner, lantern in hand, illuminates Wagner's path during his early morning walks. He travels in the Lago Maggiore and Mont Blanc in the company of his wife and Herwegh, the famous emigre poet, one of the failed heroes of the 1848 revolution, who only recently had a tragic affair with Herzen's wife, and was rejected by all his acquaintances except Wagner. In Zurich, Wagner conducts subscription concerts for two seasons (1851-52 and 1852-53), for which he makes special program announcements, explaining Beethoven to the public and his own compositions. On March 26, 1851, Mozart's Don Giovanni was staged in Zurich, with the text translated from Italian into German by Wagner himself; he conducts operas by Weber and Bellini and conducts The Flying Dutchman with great success. The culmination of this activity in Zurich was his concerts on May 18, 20 and 22, 1853, to which he, having secured a financial base from the Zurich Musical Society, was able to invite orchestra musicians from all over Germany. Excerpts from "Rienzi", "Dutchman", "Tannhäuser" and "Lohengrin" were performed.

Meanwhile, in the Dresden "General Police Index" next to the notices of the arrest of various fraudsters, under No. 652 and under the heading "Politically Dangerous Persons", an announcement was placed: The party, persecuted for taking part in the revolution in Dresden in May 1849, has, according to information, an intention to leave for Germany from Zurich, where he is at the present time. To facilitate his arrest, a portrait of Wagner is attached here, which should, if he appears, be arrested and handed over to the Royal City Court of Dresden "... Alexander Ritter, a friend of Wagner who was then living in Weimar, is designated as belongs to a family that has a "blasphemous audacity" to support Wagner financially ...

Wagner had no intention of returning to Dresden. Liszt came to him in Zurich.

Wagner laughed and cried with joy. Liszt writes: “Twenty times a day he throws himself on my neck, rolls on the floor, caresses his dog Pepsa and constantly says nonsense ... This is a big, suppressive personality, some kind of Vesuvius, who, playing with fire, grows lilac bushes on the surface and roses ". Wagner needs a million to stage The Ring! - Well then: Liszt is ready to find him! Gerwegh will publish a magazine to promote Wagner's ideas ...

Liszt, Wagner and Herweg drink broodershaft in the Swiss mountains from the three Gruetli springs. One evening this summer, the Zurich Singing Society presents Wagner with an honorary diploma and arranges a solemn torchlight procession in his honor with touching speeches. Wagner is going to visit Italy. But, having reached La Spezia, he fell ill with dysentery. Lying on a hard bed. Wagner experiences a sensation that throws light on the psychophysiology of his musical work. “I fell into a kind of somnambulistic state: suddenly it seemed to me that I was immersed in fast-flowing water. Its murmur appeared to me in the form of a musical chord Es-dur. It flowed uncontrollably on ... I woke up from my half-sleep with an eerie sensation that the waves had closed high above me. I dreamed of the Rhine Gold overture ...

On October 6, 1858, in Basel, at the Hotel Three Kings, Wagner suddenly hears a chorus: a royal fanfare tune from Lohengrin. This is Liszt with young musicians from Weimar: Hans von Bülow, the future famous violinist Joachim, the composer Cornelius, Richard Paul, Dionysus Pruckner. This is a fun, noisy, festive time. The "ladies of Liszt" also come to Basel: Princess Wittgenstein, his friend and her daughter Maria, with whom Wagner will later have friendly correspondence. Wagner reads the text of The Ring; escorts Liszt and his ladies to Paris. Here Liszt introduced him to his children from Countess d'Agu, Blandina and Cosim Liszt: both of them would later play a role in Wagner's life. Wagner returns to Switzerland to his work "With what faith, with what joy I threw myself into music!" ... "My music is terrible" ...

But does she bring him that inner satisfaction that he was waiting for? In Seelisberg near Lake Lucerne, where Wagner's wife was undergoing treatment for heart disease, he perceives the beauty of nature in such a way that he wants to die. In a feeling of new dissatisfaction with his work, suddenly again acutely feeling financial worries, experiencing his loneliness, he writes to Liszt: “I don’t believe in anything anymore, I have only one hope: sleep, sleep so deep, deep that all feeling stops torment of life ... ".

Herweg introduces Wagner to Schopenhauer's books just at this time. The philosophy of pessimism is a revelation for Wagner. "Thanks to Schopenhauer's book, I began to consciously relate to what I previously treated only through the prism of feeling." He sends Schopenhauer "as a sign of worship" a book with the text of the Nibelungen. But neither Schopenhauer personally, nor Bettina von Arnim, a representative of the German poetic romantic circles of the beginning of the century, responded to the requests of Wagner and Liszt for a review of the Ring. Wagner again feels at a crossroads. “I am bad, very bad,” he writes to Liszt on January 15, 1854. And in another letter: “For the sake of the best vision of my life, for the sake of young Siegfried, I must still finish the Nibelungs ... I have never experienced the happiness of love in my life, I want to erect a monument to this most beautiful of all dreams, in which love could truly be sated from beginning to end: I made a sketch of Tristan and Isolde in my head, the simplest, but most full-blooded musical plan ; with the black flag that flies in the window, I will cover myself in order to die. "

The solution to the problem of happiness and love given in The Ring, the theme of Brunhilde's final monologue, required a new revision.

Wagner wrote the text of Tristan between August 20 and September 18, 1857, nursing his ideas for the previous two and a half years. The music took him over a year and a half. In July 1859, the third act of Wagner's most tragic musical drama was completed in Lucerne. "Tristan", like any work of world art, cannot be explained, as bourgeois science loves, from the events of the personal life of its author. But taking these events into account is necessary, if only in order to put the personal moment in its true place.

Set for the III act of the opera "The Death of the Gods", Dresden -1913

Matilda Vevendoni.

Wagner's wife is now about fifty years old. This is a proud woman, offended by fate, who did not take a step to understand Wagner's ideas. Taking care of the house and bread, about what they say. This is Wagner's past. Typical philistinism of his original environment, routine of provincial theater scenes.

Wagner, who rose in his work and in his thought to the heights of contemporary culture, believed that he was ahead of everyone, that he had new words that did not sound before - Wagner could only feel regret for Minna. He needed Minna, of course, as a housewife, as a housekeeper. It was clear to him that a woman had not yet entered his life. And when she entered - Wagner greeted the new love with bated breath. This woman was Matilda Wesendonck, - a tall, slender, beautiful woman in black, "with a gentle and sad gaze, in the depths of which unexpected sparks sometimes flickered" (E. Schure's memoirs), - the wife of Otto Wesendonck, a capitalist associated with New York ... Matilda was twenty-four years old when she met Wagner in 1852 in Zurich. She was a worse happy mother. In June 1853, Wagner wrote her a piano sonata for her album - his first piece of music after a long break. Until then, not a single woman had been given the opportunity to inspire Wagner's music ...

But before Wagner's love tragedy unfolded, life opened new pages for him.

In 1856 Wagner conceived a new drama The Winners. Its theme is the preaching of Buddhism. Schopenhauer's philosophy becomes Wagner's ideological guide. It embodied all the inertia, individual and social, of the German bourgeoisie, which was experiencing growing pains. To a certain extent, close to the early romantics, Schopenhauer with his Buddhism is the path to that mysticism that rejects science and all the achievements of civilization, which at that time for many was a kind of surrogate worldview. Wagner in the era of the growth of the revolutionary wave is a Feuerbachian, and in the era of the collapse of bourgeois democratic ideals he is also a supporter of Schopenhauer.

The rejection of life's struggle, the path to tranquility through renunciation is a direct contradiction to the bold challenge to fate that Wagner embodied and Siegfried's duel with the serpent. Now he dreams of a different victory. If suffering is inevitable, then let it be lifted to the heights of the world principle. If it is the true destiny of everyone, then let it crown the earth. The "winners" remained a sketch. The main content of the drama was - Buddha's justification of female love. Wagner again switched the reactionary worldview of Schopenhauer into a personal problem.

Along with this, "Tristan" was brewing. Wagner wrote Tristana with great effort. The image of the beloved woman stood above him - close and unattainable far ... These are the days of the "Shelter" on a green hill near Zurich. Here the fortunate capitalist Otto Wesendonk built himself a rich villa. There was a small two-story house next to her. Matilda Wesendonk persuaded her husband to buy it and leave it to Wagner, because the composer was endlessly burdened by the living conditions in his former apartment, dreamed of peace for creativity, and in the house he called the Shelter, he thought to find his homeland before the end of his life. He spent a year and a half there.

“… I finished the text of Tristan and brought you the manuscript of the last act. When we came to the sofa, you hugged me and said: "Now all my wishes have come true." On that day, at this hour, I was resurrected for a new life. Everything that was until then was a "pre-life", from that moment an afterword began for me ... I really lived my life only at that wonderful moment ... "

Matilda lives with her husband and children in her luxurious villa. Wagner occupies the second floor of the Shelter. His wife is the first. Minna Wagner looks at the relationship between Wagner and Matilda Wesendonck with increasing hostility. Minna claimed that she was not jealous, that only the gossip that began around her, that only her vanity made her interfere in the relationship between Richard and Matilda. But, on the other hand, Minna was firmly convinced that there was a real love affair between Matilda and Wagner. In fact, she was not. Wagner's relationship with the Wesendonck family was complicated. He speaks bitterly about Wesendonck's "lack of culture", but he was at his house every day. Schopenhauer, Hindu legends, Calderon were read together. Wagner's friends, Herweg, Keller, and a famous novelist have been here. In the winter of 1857-58, Wagner composed five romances to the words of Matilda Wesendonck, a former gifted writer. The last of these poems is called "In the Greenhouse". “Poor plants! We share your destiny "... In the warmth, under glass, but in captivity ... Wagner writes to Matilda:" No, never regret them, about those caresses with which you adorned my meager joys ... And I still revel in this magical scent of flowers, which your heart brought me ... "

Minna opened one of Wagner's letters to Matilda. It was no longer possible to live in the neighborhood. The couple left for a while, then met again at the Shelter. In July and August 1858, the Wagners had guests: his devoted student and follower, now a brilliant pianist and conductor, Hans von Bülow with his young wife Cosima, Liszt's daughter. August 17, 1858 Wagner leaves the "Shelter" completely, with incredible difficulty getting money for himself and his wife. He goes to Venice. Here in the huge rooms of Giustiniani's rented palace, he spends a lonely winter. He writes the music of "Tristan", sends a letter to Matilda Wesendonk through a mutual friend - Mrs. Ville, and in the diary, which is again intended for Matilda, brings his thoughts, his feelings, his sad dreams. "Life, being, are more and more enveloped in a cloud of dreams."

"Tristan" was completed in Lucerne, where Wagner moved from Venice in March 1859, because his Saxon homeland raised the issue of the extradition of Wagner, a political criminal, before Austria, which then owned Venice. He again visited Zurich, saw Matilda and left Switzerland. In Paris, there were prospects for staging his operas. "Tristan" was sold to Breitkopf and Hertel, the score of "The Ring", not yet finished, was bought from Wagner by Otto Wesendonk.

For Wagner, his journey began again.

What is characteristic of Wagner's new work is the cult of personal suffering, egocentrism, generalized to the point of complete triumph over the broad social themes of his first Swiss years.

Villa Wesendonk and the "refuge" Zurich.

“Tristan and Isolde. Sketch of the scenery by Nicholas Roerich.

The legend of the unfortunate love of the knight Tristan for Queen Isolde, another man's wife, Wagner was known from the poem of the medieval German poet Gottfid of Strasbourg (early 13th century). In Zimrock's translation, Wagner reads it (not for the first time) in 1855. He was also familiar with the arrangement by Hermann Kurz (1844). His sources on the mythological foundations of the "Ring" prepared him for the perception of "Tristan". Old - much more ancient than Wagner thought, the myth underlies this legend. Modern Western bourgeois science is limited in the study of the roots of "Tristan" by pointing to the Persian origin of the epic. The Persian poet Gorbi in his poem "Vis and Ramin" in the middle of the 11th century outlined all the foundations from which the European legend later grew. Soviet science raises this question deeper and more principledly. In the "Piles of the Institute of Language and Thinking" the staff of Academician N. Ya. Marr traced the path from "Isolde" to "Ishtar", the ancient goddess of moisture. Tristan is a type of solar deity, just like Siegfried. But these scientifically established roots were unknown to Wagner. He turns over the meaning of the legend in his own way: his hero and heroine glorify the night and go to death through love.

The death of Tristan and Isolde resulted in his drama - and even more in his music - in the victory and triumph of love over the world. Our reality, life, day - Tristan depicts a mirage, unnecessary, evil, hiding the true meaning of phenomena. Night, death, immersion in the depths of the extraconscious, for him - the true truth. For Wagner, love in this reality is unthinkable otherwise than in the tragic aspect. There is no doubt that the very immersion in these problems of the "personal" is a reactionary moment in art. But Wagner must be able to understand in the conditions of his being. He generalized his personal tragedy to the extent of a huge "symbol".

Wagner himself later said that he had never been able to achieve such a unity of word and music in his work. "Tristan and Isolde" is written in poems that form a departure from the requirements of "runic rhyme" - free alliterative verse, established in Wagner's theoretical works. In "Tristan" there is a special melodiousness of short and flexible lines, completely subordinate to the musical element. "Endless melodies" are woven into a common complex and at the same time a single whole. The musical compositional form of Wagner is precisely what differs from everything that preceded him, that he makes her the bearer of all the contents embodied in the drama, and does this in a tangible and almost sensually visual way. In sharp oppositions of tonalities, the music conveys the contrast of love and death ...

... Bend over us.

Night of love…

Let us forget.

That we are in life.

Into the bosom of the night

Accept us

From the universe

To die is an unspeakable happiness. Isolde's death switches into a motive of ecstatic love ecstasy, dissolves in "world excitement, in world breath." And this is not the dispassionateness of the Buddhist "nirvana", but "the highest pleasures." And where death was the liberator for his heroes, art played this role for Wagner.

Tristan and Isolde freed Wagner from his bitter love for Matilda Wesendonck.

In Tristan, Wagner most fully embodied his theories. Critics greeted "Tristan" with such expressions as "monster", "absurd", "chaos", "monotony", "cat music". Hanslick, the Viennese critical dictator, considers the first act to be the crown of boredom and poetic impotence ... "killing meaning and language, stuttering" ... The protest of contemporary criticism to Wagner was to a certain extent a protest against new forms of art, a protest of the dominant class groups against all attempts to budge the established canons taste. The main thing that musicologists, Hanslik, Riehl, Naumann reproached Wagner with, was the “destruction” of forms of music. Music without a melody - which was understood as a classical, complete and established by tradition “reprise”, seemed simply not to satisfy the most natural needs of the listener. Among Wagner's opponents were ardent reactionaries, obscurantists in art, but there were also supporters of musical progress, eager to point out that Wagner was on the wrong path. It is characteristic, however, that the latter blamed Wagner for his basic conviction of the fusion of the arts, defended pure "symphonic" music, the abstractness of the sound element, that is, essentially inclined towards the equally reactionary theory of "art for art." Criticism of Wagner the poet and playwright thinker developed in other ways. It was easy to sneer at his alliterations, archaisms, myth-making. But in general, criticism of Wagner more often acknowledged their misunderstanding of Wagner than refuted it. The strongest of Wagner's critics, Nietzsche has not yet had his say.

From the book Half-Eyed Sagittarius the author Livshits Benedict Konstantinovich

TRISTAN CORBIER 215. SQUARE LANDSCAPE Sand and dust. The wave wheezes and melts, Like a distant ringing. Wave. Another wave. A fetid swamp where the hungry moon swallows Bigworms. The fever is slowly brewing here, The pale light is exhausted, The hare conjures and trembles sweetly In the rotten

From the book How idols left. The last days and hours of folk favorites author Razzakov Fedor

TRISTAN WOOD 270. We waited for the heroines who fell asleep In the shade of buckthorns turned green, Or sweetly dozing on beds Of lilies and red branches, And we would sing at last Their lips, the ardor of their fevers, So that, with our youth, we end up, Tell posterity how changeable The whole visage is as insidious

From the book Dossier on the Stars: Truth, Conjectures, Sensations, 1934-1961 author Razzakov Fedor

TRISTAN KORBIERE Corbière T. (1845-1875) - an early deceased follower of Baudelaire, associate of Verlaine and Rimbaud, he was listed among the "damned poets". His only book, Yellow Love (1873), immediately attracted attention.215. In the wolf sun - see note. to the sun, p. 562.216. Hidalgo

From the book Passion author Razzakov Fedor

TRISTAN DEREM T. Derem (1889-1941) - belonged to the same group of poets as Thule and Fargues, nicknamed by the French critics "fantasists". In essence, this is not a group united by common poetic principles, but several more or less gifted epigones of the late

From the book The Shining of Unfading Stars author Razzakov Fedor

Izvitskaya Izolda Izvitskaya Izolda (film actress: "Anxious Youth" (1955), "First Echelon", "Forty-first" (both - 1956), "Poet", "Unique Spring" (all - 1957), "Towards the Black Sea" , "Another flight" (both - 1958), "Armageddon" (1962), "Calling fire on ourselves" (t / f, 1964), "On a thin

From the book Light of extinguished stars. They went away that day author Razzakov Fedor

Izolda Izvitskaya Izolda Izvitskaya was born on June 21, 1932 in the Gorky region in the small town of Dzerzhinsk chemists. Her parents had nothing to do with the art world: her father worked as a chemist, her mother was a teacher. In the summer of 1950, Izolda Izvitskaya finished 10

From the book For people to remember author Razzakov Fedor

Izolda IZVITSKAYA This once popular film actress (her calling card is the role of Maryutka in the 1956 film Forty-first) got married immediately after graduating from VGIK in 1955. With her husband - 20-year-old actor Eduard Bredun - she met on the set of the film

From the book of Gala. How to make a genius out of Salvador Dali author Benoit Sophia

IZVITSKAYA Izolda IZVITSKAYA Isolde (theater and film actress: "Hero" goes to Marto "(Nastenka)," Anxious youth "(Catherine) (both - 1955)," Good morning "(the main role - Masha Komarova)," Forty-first " (main role - Maryutka Filatova), "First Echelon" (Anna Zalogina) (all -

From the book Great love stories. 100 stories of great feeling the author Irina A. Mudrova

March 1 - Izolda Izvitskaya This actress had a meteoric rise and a tragic fall. By her fate, she clearly confirmed the truth that the world of big cinema can raise you to the very crest of success, but with the same success it can overthrow you from there and

From the book of Wagner the author Alexey Sidorov

Izolda Izvitskaya Izolda Izvitskaya's star rose in the mid-50s - with the role of Maryutka in the film Forty-first. Then the young actress thought that only success and love of a multimillion audience awaited her ahead of her. Alas, the happiness did not last long - only five years. Then

From the book The Book of Masks author Gourmont Remy de

Izolda Izvitskaya Izolda Vasilievna Izvitskaya was born on June 21, 1932 in the Gorky region in the small town of Dzerzhinsk chemists. Her parents had nothing to do with the art world: her father worked as a chemist, her mother was a teacher. In the summer of 1950, Izvitskaya graduated from 10

From the book of Izolda Izvitskaya. Ancestral curse the author Tendora Natalia Yaroslavovna

Chapter 8. Tristan Tzara and the Parisian rebels. "Postcards" as a challenge to society Feelings that gripped Gala and the German artist Max Ernst can hardly be described as a thunderbolt, but Ernst's work could be safely described as a thunderbolt in

From the author's book

Tristan and Isolde Tristan and Isolde are legendary characters in a medieval knightly romance of the 12th century. Tristan was the prince of Louonua. His mother died early, and he, hiding from the intrigues of his stepmother, ended up at the court of his uncle, the Cornish king Mark, who carefully raised

From the author's book

TRISTAN AND Izolda Zurich remained Wagner's residence for ten years. Wagner worked extensively as a theorist, as a poet and as a musician; he recreated his worldview; as a person, he experienced sorrow and joy, friendship and love. The consciousness was born in him that he

From the author's book

A star named Isolde The phenomenon of actress Isolde Izvitskaya, a star of poetic realism, who flashed brightly and colorfully on the skyscrapers of the mid-50s after the release of Grigory Chukhrai's film "Forty-first", is still little studied. How to explain such a dizzying

Characters:

Tristan	tenor
Mark, King of Cornwall, his uncle	bass
Kurwenal, servant of Tristan	baritone
Melot, courtier of King Mark	tenor
Isolde, the Irish princess	soprano
Brangena, her maid	soprano
Young sailor	tenor
Shepherd	tenor
Helmsman	baritone
Sailors, knights and squires.
The action takes place on the deck of a ship, in Cornwall and Brittany. Time of action: early middle ages.

HISTORY OF CREATION

The legend of Tristan and Isolde is of Celtic origin. It probably came from Ireland and enjoyed the widest popularity in all countries of medieval Europe, spreading in many variants (its first literary adaptation - a Franco-Breton novel - dates back to the 12th century). Over the centuries, it has acquired various poetic details, but the meaning remained the same: love is stronger than death. he interpreted this legend differently: he created a poem about a painful all-consuming passion, which is stronger than reason, a sense of duty, family obligations, which overturns the usual ideas, breaks ties with the outside world, with people, with life. In accordance with the composer's intention, the opera is marked by the unity of dramatic expression, tremendous tension, tragic intensity of feelings.

PLOT

For a long time, King Mark of Cornwall paid tribute to Ireland. But the day came when, instead of tribute, the Irish received the head of their best warrior - the brave Morold, who was killed in a duel by King Mark's nephew, Tristan. The bride of the slain, Isolde, vowed eternal hatred for the victor. Once the sea brought to the shores of Ireland a boat with a mortally wounded warrior, and Isolde, taught by her mother the art of healing, began to heal him with magic potions. The knight called himself Tantris, but his sword revealed a secret: it had a notch on it, to which a steel shard found in Morold's head approached. Isolde raises her sword over the head of the enemy, but the supplicating gaze of the wounded stops her; suddenly Isolde realizes that she loves Tristan. Having recovered, Tristan left Ireland, but soon returned again on a richly decorated ship - to marry Isolde as a wife to King Mark in order to put an end to the enmity between their countries. Obeying the will of her parents, Isolde agreed, and now they sail to Cornwall. Isolde, offended by Tristan's coldness, showered him with ridicule. Unable to bear his indifference, Isolde decides to die with him; she invites Tristan to share the death cup with her. But the faithful Brangena, wishing to save her mistress, pours a love drink instead of the drink of death. Tristan and Isolde drink from the same goblet, and an invincible passion grips them. Amid the joyful shouts of the sailors, the ship lands on the shores of Cornwall, where King Mark has long awaited his bride.

Under cover of night, lovers secretly meet in the garden near Isolde's chambers. Today Tristan was delayed by the hunt - the horns of the royal retinue are heard not far away, and Brangena hesitates to give a conventional sign - to extinguish the torch. She warns Isolde that Melot is watching them, but Isolde is far from suspicious: for her, he is Tristan's loyal friend. Unable to wait any longer, Isolde puts out the torch herself. Tristan appears, and passionate confessions of lovers sound in the darkness of the night. They glorify darkness and death, in which there is no lie and deceit that reign in the light of day; only night stops parting, only in death can they unite forever. King Mark and the courtiers suddenly appear. They were led by Melot, who had long been tormented by a passion for Isolde. The king is shocked by the betrayal of Tristan, whom he loved as a son, but the feeling of revenge is unfamiliar to him. Tristan tenderly says goodbye to Isolde, he calls her with him to the distant and beautiful land of death. An outraged Melot draws out his sword, and the badly wounded Tristan falls into the arms of his servant Kurwenal.

The faithful Kurwenal took Tristan from Cornwall to his ancestral castle Carol in Brittany. Seeing that the knight did not regain consciousness, he sent a pilot with a message to Isolde. And now, having prepared a bed for Tristan in the garden at the gate of the castle, Kurwenal gazes intently into the deserted sea space - will not there appear a ship carrying Isolde? From afar one can hear the sad tune of the shepherd's flute - he, too, is waiting for the healer of his beloved master. The familiar hum makes Tristan open his eyes. He hardly remembers everything that happened. His spirit wandered far away, in a blissful country where there is no sun - but Isolde is still in the kingdom of the day, and the gates of death, which had already slammed behind Tristan, opened wide again - he must see his beloved. In his delirium, Tristan imagines an approaching ship, but the shepherd's sad tune again brings him back to reality. He plunges into sad memories of his father, who died without seeing his son, of his mother who died at his birth, of the first meeting with Isolde, when, as now, he was dying of a wound, and of a love drink that doomed him to eternal flour. Feverish excitement deprives Tristan of his strength. And again he fancies an approaching ship. This time he was not deceived: the shepherd gives the good news with a cheerful tune, Kurwenal is in a hurry to the sea. Left alone, Tristan rushes about on the bed in excitement, tears off the bandage from the wound. Staggering, he goes to meet Isolde, falls into her arms and dies. At this time, the shepherd informs about the approach of the second ship - this is Mark arrived with Melot and the soldiers; the voice of Brangena is heard calling for Isolde. Kurwenal rushes to the gate with a sword; Melot falls, struck by his hand. But the forces are too unequal: mortally wounded Kurwenal dies at the feet of Tristan. King Mark is shocked. Brangena told him the secret of a love potion, and he hurried after Isolde to forever connect her with Tristan, but he sees only death around him. Detached from everything that happens, Isolde fixes her gaze on the body of Tristan; she hears the call of her beloved; with his name on her lips she dies.

MUSIC

June 27th, 2009

Music: Tristan und Isolde

"Since I have never experienced the true happiness of love in my life, I want to erect another monument in honor of this most beautiful of all dreams, in which love must satisfy its hunger from beginning to end."

Richard Wagner.

The opera, or musical drama, (Tristan und Isolde) was completed by Wagner in 1859 and staged for the first time on June 10, 1865 in Munich. The writing of the work was accompanied by significant events in the life of Wagner, the premiere and production - difficulties and even deaths of the conductors on stage and the first tenor after four performances. In the first years of its existence, the opera did not receive approval, was criticized, and received its recognition only decades later, having had a huge impact on the further development of music.

The period of Wagner's life, after his operas Tannhäuser (1845) and Lohengrin (1850), is a turning point in his external and internal destiny. Operas were not received with particular enthusiasm, the audience and critics did not understand Wagner, even his wife Minna, who at that time fell into a deep depression, had long disliked his opera. In addition, Wagner, who had played a small part in the failed May Revolution of 1849, was forced to leave his post as conductor at the Dresden Opera, leave Germany and leave for Zurich, fearing persecution. There, in 1952, Wagner met a wealthy silk merchant Otto Wesendonk, who supported him financially for several years, and whose wife Matilda was fascinated by Wagner and subsequently, along with the works of Arthur Schopenhauer, inspired Wagner to write the opera Tristan and Isolde. ... Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher and one of the most staunch supporters of Wagner, wrote about this period of the composer's work: “… The period of a great man’s life, like a golden reflection, illuminated by the radiance of the highest mastery! Now only the genius of dithyrambic drama is throwing off the last veil! ".

In 1854, Wagner's friend, the poet Georg Gerwegh, introduced him to the works of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Wagner would later call this the most important event in his life. One of Schopenhauer's doctrines was that music plays a central role among all arts. He stated that music is a direct expression of impulsive blind will as the fundamental principle of the world. Wagner immediately jumped at the idea, despite his opposite point of view, according to which music in opera should be subordinated to drama, and not be the primary source of everything else. It has been noticed that since the beginning of Schopenhauer's influence on Wagner, the latter began to put forward precisely music for the main role in his operas, including the second part of the operas from the Ring of the Nibelungen cycle, which had yet to be written by that time.

By the end of 1854, Wagner had sketched all three acts of the opera, but it was not until August 1857 that he took up opera closely, postponing for a while Siegfried (the third of four parts of the monumental opera The Ring of the Nibelungen). In almost a month from August 20 to September 18, Wagner wrote the libretto (or poem, as he himself preferred to call it). In October 1857, the composer began writing the musical part. This year, Wagner was already blinded by a passion for Matilda Vasendonk, but the emergence of a connection between them that could destroy their families was prevented by both Matilda herself, who cherishes her marriage, and Wagner's wife Minna, who intervened in their relationship in the most decisive way. In August 1858, Wagner was forced to leave for Venice. He later described his final days in Zurich as "Real hell"... Until March 1859, Wagner lived in Venice, where he completed work on the second part of the opera. The third part was completed in August of the same year in the Swiss city of Lucerne.

The premiere of this difficult opera was postponed for various reasons until the summer of 1865. Initially, Wagner intended to stage it at the Paris Opera, but after the failure of his revised Tannhäuser in 1861, the composer settled at a theater in Karlsruhe, Germany. After visiting the Royal Vienna Opera, the city administration offered to stage the opera in Vienna, and over the next three years more than seventy auditions for the main roles took place, but the Vienna Opera eventually refused to stage the production, the work was declared unenforceable. Even after, thanks to King Ludwig II of Bavaria, who since childhood was a great fan of Wagner's operas, sufficient funds were raised for the production of the opera, the initial premiere, scheduled for May 15, 1865, had to be postponed due to the fact that the performer of the role Isolde went hoarse. The premiere of the opera took place on June 10, 1865 at the National Theater in Munich. The role of Tristan was sung by Ludwig Schnorr von Karolsfeld, the role of Isolde - by his wife Malvina. Three weeks later, after four performances, Ludwig Schnorr von Karolsfeld died unexpectedly, with rumors that the death was caused by overexertion during the performance. Two conductors died from a heavy load while working on stage during the performance of the second act in 1911 and 1968.

The opera was initially criticized. From all sides, from music publications, writers, other artists, remarks and censures were heard. They wrote that Wagner did not show the life of the heroes of the Nordic sagas, who were supposed to instruct and strengthen the spirit of the German listener, but created an obscene work showing the collapse of the heroes' lives through sensuality. Mark Twain, after listening to Tristan and Isolde at the Bayreuth Opera, commented: “I know some, and I have heard of many who could not sleep after that and cried all night. I feel out of place. Sometimes it seems to me as if I am the only sane in this society of madmen. "... Some called the opera a disgusting piece. However, over time, opera became more favorably disposed. Composers such as Giuseppe Verdi, Richard Strauss, the writer Bernard Shaw admired Tristan and Isolde as a masterpiece. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: "Tristan and Isolde" is a real opus metaphysicum of all art - a work on which rests the dying gaze of a dying man, with his insatiable, languid desire for the secrets of night and death, for escape from life, which, like something evil, deceiving and separating, stands out sharply in the rays of a mysterious, ominous morning; moreover, it is a drama clothed in the most severe, austere form, captivating with its stately simplicity ... "... Even after breaking up with Wagner, Nietzsche did not change his view of opera: "Even now I am still in search of a work that would cause such a dangerous attraction, a feeling of blissful eternity and would take it for a living like" Tristan and Isolde "- so far, the search has not been crowned with success in any kind of art".

The score for Tristan and Isolde has often been regarded as a milestone in the history of Western music. Throughout the opera, Wagner used a striking variety of orchestral nuances, harmonies and polyphony and did so with a freedom that was scarcely found in his previous operas. The opera is notable for various innovations, for example, harmonic suspension - harmonic turns to create musical tension through interrupted cadences, thus causing the listener to expect permission in the music (resolution of unstable dominant harmonies in the tonic). Although the harmonic suppressor was sometimes used in music even before the Renaissance, Wagner was one of the first composers to use it throughout the work. One example of this technique can be heard in a love duet in the second act ( "Wie sie fassen, wie sie lassen ...", see further the third piece of music from the opera, 6:20). The tonality of Tristan and Isolde has subsequently had a profound influence on Western classical music.

Wagner wrote his libretto based on the original story of Tristan and Isolde, which is the quintessence of the novels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Among the several versions of the story, the earliest dates from the middle of the 12th century, and the version of Gottfried of Strasbourg had a huge impact on German literature in the future. This dramatic story tells of two lovers whose love did not last long, as life circumstances prevented them from being together. Tristan is taking Isolde on the ship, married to his uncle, King Mark, to Cornval. During a sea voyage, both accidentally drink an elixir, believing that it is poison, and, believing that death is near, declare their love to each other. Already on royal land, during a long night rendezvous, when King Mark, who also loves Isolde, is on the hunt, the lovers glorify night and death, which for them is higher than the vain light of day. They glorify the night as a time when only they can be together, and only in the eternal night of death can they always be together. Not noticing the approach of day, Tristan and Isolde are discovered by the king and his retinue in each other's arms. The king is saddened by the betrayal of his nephew, Tristan's friend Melot supports the king's side, and draws his sword against Tristan. In a short fight, Tristan throws his sword aside and receives a mortal wound. After these events, Tristan's loyal servant Courwenal takes him home. Resting on a bed in his castle in Brittany, Tristan loses consciousness, then comes to himself, gloomily talking about his own fate. He believes that only Isolde can heal him. When she stays with him in the castle, he tears off the bandages from his wounds and throws himself into her arms to die immediately with her name on his lips. Later, Isolde also dies of grief. About Wagner's libretto, Nietzsche wrote: "... none of Wagner's dramas are intended to be read, and thus they cannot be made to meet the requirements that we set for a literary drama." and sincerity of communication with him; this, with the exception of Goethe, is not felt to such an extent in any German writer. "

Fragments of the opera.

1. Act 1. An excerpt from the 2nd scene. On the ship. Isolde sent her servant Brangen for Tristan and waits, when Tristan's servant sees Brangen, reports this to Tristan.
http://www.murashev.com/classics/mp3/Tristan und Isolde - Act 1 - Scene 2.mp3

2. Act 1. The beginning of the 5th scene. First meeting on the ship between Tristan and Isolde.
http://www.murashev.com/classics/mp3/Tristan und Isolde - Act 1 - Scene 5.mp3

3. Act 2. Excerpts from scenes 2 and 3. Tristan and Isolde together, enjoying the night alone, not noticing the coming of the day, are discovered by the King and the courtiers. As this passage progresses, the tension in the music gradually builds up. Wagner manages to convey the drama of history with music and the voices of singers like no one else. Listen from start to finish! And at least a couple of times. 2 minutes. 25 sec .: Isolde's maid from the castle tower warns them that the day will come soon, they must leave. 5 min.: The lovers do not want to leave each other, dreaming that the night will last forever, even if this night is death. 8 min.: Resolution is approaching here! It feels like the music just won't let you go. Every time I listen to the second scene of the second act, I do not remain indifferent, as if there is something magical in this music.
http://www.murashev.com/classics/mp3/Tristan und Isolde - Act 2 - Scene 2 - So starben wir - Scene 3.mp3