Isolde: Magnificent Obsession
Tristan: Ecstasy of Denial
On October 21, 2006, Pilar Montero and I were part of a presentation on Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde in conjunction with new production by the San Francisco Opera. The précis of our talk is below.
Tristan and Isolde was the artistic vehicle for Wagner’s desperate attempt to heal the split in his personal and artistic life. The couple represents the masculine and feminine opposites par excellence. Tristan is the masculine: the light, the logical, the warrior-hero, the leader, and honor bound protector of the fatherland of Cornwall and its king Mark. Isolde is the feminine: the dark, the witch, the emotional, the healer, the captive, and represents her mother and the motherland of Ireland. The motive force of the music drama moves inexorably in the hopes of healing these two psychic extremes using the ecstatic elixirs of love, merger, death, (the Jungian conniunctio) and annihilation of the “Will” (Schopenhauer).
