Tristan und Isolde, an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner, was created between 1857 and 1859 and premiered in Munich in 1865. It marks the maturity of Wagner's style. With its unique integration of harmony, melody and drama, it has ushered in a new era in music and has had a profound impact on the development of music in later generations. The story goes that Tristan, the nephew of King Marke of Cornwall, was tasked with escorting Princess Isolde of Ireland to marry the king. On the way, the two accidentally drank a love potion and fell in love, and their story finally ended in tragedy.

 

On December 2024, witnessed by Ms. Katharina Wagner, the great-granddaughter of Richard Wagner and the artistic director of the Bayreuth Festival, the Bayreuth Festival, one of the world's top music festivals, announced its first entry into China and landed in Shanghai, launching the "Bayreuth in Shanghai" three-year opera project. From 2025 to 2027, three major Wagner operas will come to Shanghai one after another. Among them, the 2022 version of the opera Tristan und Isolde from Bayreuth will be the first in the three-year opera project and will make its debut at the Shanghai Grand Theatre from July 4th to 6th, 2025. This is also the premiere of this most representative opera by Wagner in Shanghai.

 

This version is directed by Roland Schwab, incorporating a simple and modern stage design, using projection technology, with the stage set in a huge oval room, enabling the audience to feel as if they are in a utopia of love and experience a unique artistic experience.

 

© Bayreuth Festival / Enrico Nawrath

 

Tristan und Isolde is the ultimate work about love. No opera, no play, no film has ever been so consistent—indeed, so radical—in this regard. In a challenging way termed a "dramatic action" by Wagner, it unfolds fewer actions than reflections on devotion and vengeance, day and night, world-denial and transcendence.

 

Richard Wagner's music for Tristan und Isolde is the most bewitching negation of life ever created. How can a stage correspond to this unique music—which, like no other, dissolves boundaries? Boundaries between you and me, between life and death? How can a scene correspond to music that transports us through chromatic hypnosis into the boundless universe, even into the boundless universe of our own soul? Until all language, all being and striving, become pure sound? Our response must be equally radical as this work: The music itself, sound itself, is the primary concept. For us, there is no more important theme. Nothing else needs to be staging! What we wish to create for Bayreuth is a yearning Adagio of the Night—full of seduction, full of enchantment that toward the beyond. A nocturnal excess of escapist stands in absolute defiance of all contemporary "daytime phantoms"... "Grant oblivion, that I may cease... release me from the world!"

Knowledge Consultant: Kang Xiao, Professor at the China Conservatory of Music and Doctoral Supervisor.

German-Chinese and German-English Translator: Yao Yuan, undergraduate student from the German Department of East China Normal University.

 

© Bayreuth Festival / Enrico Nawrath