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Love as the most original human emotion and the path to salvation became for Richard Wagner the central leitmotif not only of his work but also of his life. Influenced by Schopenhauer’s conception of the world as will and idea and by his love affair with Mathilde Wesendonck, he composed a collection of songs, Wesendonck-Lieder, which became a study for his later musical drama Tristan und Isolde. In the second act of this ‚opus metaphysicum‘, the longest love duet in the history of opera treats the transcendental sublimation of a loving couple surrendering their being in a loving embrace that transcends the limits of physicality and a hostile and unkind world. Wesendonck-Lieder’s performative sketch reflects on Wagner’s conception of the Gesamtkunstwerk as a synthesis of ideas, forms and the (stage) being of (dramatic) characters sublimating into an ephemeral moment breaking out not only from traditional theatrical form, but also from the shackles of moral bigotry with its theme of unconditional and boundless love. Such a conception of love has always been a thorn in the side of any authoritarian society. Tristan was performed for the last time in 1939 at the Bayreuth Festival Theatre, where the Nazis misused interpretations of Wagner’s works for the purposes of their perverted ideology. It did not appear on the programme until 1952, a year after the post-war revival of the Bayreuth Festival.
Premiere: 5. / 6. 12. 2024 _ Štúdio 12, Bratislava