Debates about terms aside, in Nike Wagner’s devastating reading of the drama, the love duet & the #Liebestod are a cloak for the terrible truth revealed when Tristan breaks the pact of simultaneous death:

“That even in love, every person is alone...that love is a projection of the self, a code-name for all sorts of other needs. Although we hold the romantic hope that we can submerge our ego in another person, this is ultimately a pious self-deception...one cannot escape from oneself...”

[3/5]

A lovers tryst leads to a pact: Tristan proposes the Liebestod, or love-death (aka double or simultaneous suicide), to Isolde. "Thus might we die, together, ever one, without end." She consents. But then Tristan breaks the pact by dying alone, before her. Isolde dies after him, after singing an exquisite aria over his body.

The aria that ends the opera is commonly (mis)called the #Liebestod. In fact, Wagner called it Isolde's #Transfiguration.

[2/5]

Edvard #Grieg:
Sex digte (Six poèmes), op. 25, sur des poèmes d'#Ibsen

Richard #Strauss:
Schlagende Herzen, op. 29, no 2
Geduld, op. 10, no 5
Allerseelen, op. 10, no 8
Ruhe meine seele, op. 27, no 1
Für fünfzehn Pfennige, op. 36, no 2
Die Georgine, op. 10, no 4
Die Nacht, op. 10, no 3

Robert #Schumann:
Frauenliebe und -leben, op. 42

Richard #Wagner:
Isoldes #Liebestod

Marianne Beate Kielland, #mezzo-soprano
Nils Anders Mortensen, #piano

#classicalmusic #Concert #Lieder