Isolde's voice! Into her arms, outstretched to receive him, staggers Tristan. Gently she lets him down upon his couch, where he has lain in the anguish of expectancy.
"Tristan!"
"Isolde!" he answers in broken accents. This last look resting rapturously upon her, while in mournful beauty the Love Glance Motive rises from the orchestra, he expires.
In all music there is no scene more deeply shaken with sorrow.
Tumultuous sounds are heard. A second ship has arrived. Marke and his suite have landed. Tristan's men, thinking the King has come in pursuit of Isolde, attack the new-comers, Kurwenal and his men are overpowered, and Kurwenal, having avenged Tristan by slaying Melot, sinks, himself mortally wounded, dying by Tristan's side. He reaches out for his dead master's hand, and his last words are: "Tristan, chide me not that faithfully I follow you."
When Brangäne rushes in and hurriedly announces that she has informed the King of the love-potion, and that he comes bringing forgiveness, Isolde heeds her not. As the Love-Death Motive rises softly over the orchestra and slowly swells into the impassioned Motive of Ecstasy, to reach its climax with a stupendous crash of instrumental forces, she gazes with growing transport upon her dead lover, until, with rapture in her last glance, she sinks upon his corpse and expires.
In the Wagnerian version of the legend this love-death, for which Tristan and Isolde prayed and in which they are united, is more than a mere farewell together to life. It is tinged with Oriental philosophy, and symbolizes the taking up into and the absorption of by nature of all that is spiritual, and hence immortal, in lives rendered beautiful by love.
DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG
THE MASTERSINGERS OF NUREMBURG
Opera in three acts, words and music by Richard Wagner. Produced, Munich, June 21, 1868, under direction of Hans von Bülow. London, Drury Lane, May 30, 1882, under Hans Richter; Covent Garden, July 13, 1889, in Italian; Manchester, in English, by the Carl Rosa Company, April 16, 1896. New York, Metropolitan Opera House, January 4, 1886, with Fischer (Hans Sachs), Seidl-Kraus (Eva), Marianne Brandt (Magdalena), Stritt (Walther), Kemlitz (Beckmesser); Conductor, Seidl. Sachs has also been sung by Édouard de Reszke, Van Rooy, and Whitehill; Walther by Jean de Reszke; Eva by Eames, Gadski, and Hempel; Beckmesser by Goritz; Magdalena by Schumann-Heink and Homer.
Characters