Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Wagner: Tristan und Isolde, Acts I and II

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

The problem with broadcasting the operas of Richard Wagner is that many of them are too long in duration to fit into my three-and-a-half hour timeslot. Although I hate to violate the integrity of a complete recorded performance, the only way I can accommodate Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (1865) is to break up my presentation into two parts over two Sundays. So this Sunday you will hear the first two of the three acts of this monumental music drama.

Springtime is the season for lovers, and now while the season is in full flower I treat you to one of the alltime great stories of tragic love, the tale derived from medieval courtly romance and ultimately from ancient Celtic legend. As with all his other operas, Wagner wrote his own libretto for Tristan und Isolde; his take on the old story possesses some modern psychological insights. Wagner's handling of the emotions of the lovers makes this opera an enduring, iconic work of musical art. This work requires singers of enormous stamina and skill to carry it off convincingly. In recorded operatic history there is a cadre of famous sopranos who essayed the role of Isolde. One of them was the much esteemed Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad. You will hear her legendary voice opposite German Heldentenor Ludwig Suthaus as Tristan. Some say Flagstad's voice was past its prime in 1952 when she recorded the opera in London's Kingsway Hall with a cast that included the young baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Kurvenal.

Flagstad and cast were taking part in a landmark recorded interpretation under the baton of Wilhelm Furtwängler. He conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra and the chorus of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Walter Legge, himself a legendary figure in recording history, produced the reel-to-reel taping sessions for EMI. Originally released on monaural LP's in 1953, the old mono tapes were digitally remastered and Furtwängler's superb Tristan und Isolde was reissued on four vinyl discs in 1986. In the US the reissue appeared under EMI's Angel/Seraphim label.