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The Ouverture to Tristan and Isolde is singularly calculated to create the mood in which the Opera needs to be heard. It discourses of nothing but love. It is long, it knocks and presses upon chords lying abysmally below thought, until these vibrate in response, and the curtain goes up before an almost helplessly sympathetic listener.
Full light was shed on the affair at a later stage; for the present it was a matter of the utmost importance for me to face the fact that I was entirely cut off from Germany, and must think of a fresh field for the production of Tristan, which lay so near my heart.
In self-defence they draw arms upon the slashing madman. He extorts his death-wound as it were by force from one of them... Painfully he drags himself along the earth, until he can touch his master's hand: "Tristan, dear lord! Chide not that the faithful one comes along too!"
That evening, when the boards were cleared, a singer out of Wales, a master, came forward among the barons in Hall and sang a harpers song, and as this harper touched the strings of his harp, Tristan who sat at the Kings feet, spoke thus to him: Oh master, that is the first of songs! The Bretons of old wove it once to chant the loves of Graëlent.
Sixth, "The Adventures of Tristram," or Tristan, is a repetition of those which had been attributed to Launcelot of the Lake.
The notion of their longing being fulfilled is utterly foreign to Wagner's Tristan, nor is there at any moment the smallest hope of their ever possessing each other in this life. However consumed they are with love they retain perfect mastery over themselves.
I got out at Modling to call on Ander the tenor, having invited myself for that day with the intention of going through Tristan. It was still very early on a bright morning, and the day was gradually growing warmer. I decided to take a walk in the lovely Bruhl before looking up Ander.
But Tristan, seeing by the gesture of the huntsman that he made to cut the neck of the stag, cried out: My lord, what would you do? Is it fitting to cut up so noble a beast like any farm-yard hog? Is that the custom of this country? And the huntsman answered: Fair friend, what startles you?
"They have always been thus," she stammered. "Bah!" retorted the archer, "only yesterday they still formed a fine black cross, which inspired devotion." Tristan east a sidelong glance at the recluse. "I think the old dame is getting confused!" The unfortunate woman felt that all depended on her self-possession, and, although with death in her soul, she began to grin. Mothers possess such strength.
Anyhow, if he had done what Mr. Chamberlain and many others say he did, we should have found it in the last act. Instead, there is not a word on the subject. Wagner's thinking might be misty: his dramatic instinct was supremely right and sure. In the first act Isolda and Tristan enjoy their love only for a few minutes; the world, daylight, breaks in and separates them.
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