Death-Devoted Heart (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Roger Scruton
- First Published: 2004
- Type of Work: Music
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction, Arts
- Subjects: Love or romance, Nineteenth century, Music or musicians, Art or artists, Legends, Idealism, Heroes or heroism, Composers, Germany or German people, Middle Ages, Opera, operas, or operettas
Tristan und Isolde (1859; Tristan and Isolde) remains, in many ways, Richard Wagner's most enigmatic work. John DiGaetani in Wagner and Suicide (2003) referred to Tristan und Isolde as “Wagner's most suicidal opera.” M. Owen Lee in Athena Sings: Wagner and the Greeks (2003) called it the “most Aeschylean of Wagner's works.”
Some critics have dismissed Tristan and Isolde as a self-absorbed byproduct of the composer's adulterous liaison (perhaps never consummated) with Mathilde Wesendonck (1828-1902), the wife of one of his most...
[The entire page is 2129 words long]
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