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RISTAN AND ISOLDE' is the one of all Wagner's operas which has the ' power over tears.' The sad faces of the lovers look out from the canvas less shadowy than those whom Dante saw, more noble than the two who live in Tennyson's ' Guinevere.' Fate is the keynote, and among the rocks of Fate's hungry whirlpool — 'more dark than the wide sea's womb' — all the love, all the longing, is crushed in night.

The poem was finished in 1859. The music was performed at Munich under Bulow, some years after it was written, in 1865.

The Vorspiel is based on the expression of 'Sehnsuclit,' a word which is only imperfectly translated by ' yearning.'

Then come the few notes which tell of the first time Tristan's eyes met those of Isolde. These flow on into the tale of their love, their fate, their defiance of death, and the Prelude closes pp. with the unsatisfied notes of longing with which it began. The first act shows Isolde with her maid, Brangäne, on the ship which Tristan is steering to Cornwall, the realm of his uncle and benefactor. King; Mark. Tristan stands at the helm with a set, white face, and Isolde's name burning into his heart. For he, 'the soul of honour,' had not felt at liberty to woo the lovely Irish Princess for himself, bound as he was in gratitude to King Mark, and stained with the blood of Isolde's kinsman, Morold, whom he had slain in single combat. Isolde, won in the blunt old fashion for the Kine", feels cruelly wronged by Tristan's conduct. She tells Brangäne how she had discovered the slayer of lier betrothed kinsman in the wounded stranger ' Tantris,' who had come to the palace to be healed by her mother's well-known healing art, and how her uplifted sword had fallen when the stranger's eyes were fixed on hers instead of on the threatening-blade. She now summons Tristan, and when he offers her his sword to avenge on his unprotected breast the death of Morold, she demands instead that he drink 'Expiation ' (Sühne). He, understanding her intention to mix poison in the cup, agrees to embrace death; but when he has drunk only half the cup, Isolde snatches it from him — 'Traitor, wouldst thou here also deny my right?' — and drinks the rest. Having by this act silently confessed their mutual love, they stand looking in each other's eyes and await death. But the faithful Brangäne has substituted the 'Love Potion' for the 'Death Potion,' has prepared lifelong misery stead of sharp, kind death, and the passion which grows in their eyes is henceforth to overmaster them and ' to lead these twain to the life of tears and fire — to the lifeless life of night.'

The second act glows with passion from the beginning to the end. The Introduction pourtrays Isolde's impatient expectation of her lover. She is now in King Mark's castle, but the Court is out hunting with the King — all save Tristan, who only waits the extinction of Isolde's torch to fly to her arms. The night draws down, the hunting-horns die away in the distance, and in spite of Brangäne's entreaties and warnings, Isolde seizes the torch. 'Even were it my life's light thus would I quench it, smiling.' The duet, or rather the series of duets, which follows, is pitched in an ever more impassioned tone, and the intensity is only relieved, as in mere physical exhaustion, by the soothing-slumber motive, and by the song which sings on her watchtower.