Famous Opening Nights & The World Around Their Creation: Tristan und Isolde
Tristan und Isolde, 10th June 1865, Munich
I read the news today, Oh Boy!
On this fateful day, something happened in the sphere of music that was to change the whole world, and it seemed to me that it might be very interesting to know what was going on elsewhere in the world, when ‘Tristan und Isolde’ was first performed in the Kőnigliches Hoftheater und Nationaltheater in Munich. The opening notes of ‘Tristan’ were so revolutionary and prophetic, that for that first night audience the world must have appeared to stop. I shall look at the musical revolution in due course, but in the words of Harold Macmillan let’s get an overview of the “events, dear boy, events”.
The American Civil War was proceeding to its final denouement, Lincoln had been assassinated (and the conspirators were a month from execution), Ludwig II had recently become King of Bavaria (but the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71 were soon to mark huge changes in Germany), the Second French Empire under Napoleon III was about to fall, Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” were a month from publication, Lord Palmerston had a few months left both to live and be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, the Brazilian and Paraguayan navies were preparing for the crucial Battle of Riachuelo, and in 12 days’ time W G Grace was to make his First Class debut for the Gentlemen against the Players!
In China, the Nian Rebellion against the Qing Dynasty was nearing its climax, and the rebels were menacing Beijing. Although Imperial troops were to crush the Rebellion three years later, it was a harbinger of the eventual fall of the Qing Dynasty.
In India, the British Empire strengthened its grip on the country. The Government of India Act of 1858 had transferred power from the East India Company to the British Crown (and Parliament), and 1865 found further Acts passed to make this situation clearer.
Preparations were underway for the first performance, 43 years after its composition, of Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony later that year in Vienna, and Meyerbeer’s opera, ‘L’ Africaine’ had recently opened in Paris. The first public performance of any music by Tchaikovsky was in preparation – his ‘Characteristic Dances’ were premiered in St Petersburg (conducted by Johann Strauss II) in September.
In an era not dominated by instant news, it was inevitable that what was most important to people was what was happening locally. However, the noise and fury of the American Civil War reverberated around the world. This new nation – remember the Declaration of Independence was only signed in 1776 – had come so far in such a short time that we sometimes forget how cataclysmic the Civil War was. We only need to think of many of those demonstrators at the Capitol in Washington this year (2021), with their Confederate banners and proclamations of the legitimacy of the Southern States, to realise that some wounds have still not healed.
Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address had been made only two years before, after the Battle of Gettysburg, which ended in a crushing victory for the Union against the Confederacy. The main speaker at the consecration of the cemetery to the fallen was Edward Everett, who spoke for two hours in a feat of splendid high-flown oratory, a monumental speech of 13,607 words. By contrast, Lincoln spoke for only a few minutes in about ten sentences. But what sentences they were! Beginning “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”, and concluding “...that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” Great and monumental words, words that we still hold dear all these decades later, despite the wars and misery and anguish of the ensuing years. Democracy may be a flawed concept, but, as Churchill said, quoting some other unattributed phrase, “it is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time...”
It is one of the surprises of history, for the amateur historian at least, that Lincoln was assassinated only two years after the Gettysburg address, and that this bloody war, the first in history to use mass-produced weapons, only lasted four years, having effectively ended on April 9th, 1865, when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House. Five days later Lincoln was dead, but the outcome of the war remained the same, with slavery abolished and the slaves emancipated.
By June 10th, the world knew about the end of the war and the death of Lincoln. Wagner, with his revolutionary politics and fascination with history, must have felt a sense of the importance of the moment, although his great mentor (a least for some of his life), Nietzsche, was ardently pro-slavery, and Wagner himself, with his virulent anti-Semitism, was hardly a defender of the equality of man!
Far more important for the composer was the crowning of King Ludwig II in 1864. Almost immediately, the King summoned Wagner to court, where he was accorded privileges and rights beyond his wildest dreams.
Wagner’s summons to court was only one of a series of decisions by the new King which severely troubled the resident courtiers, and more were to follow. His alliance with Austria against Prussia in the Austro-Prussian War the year after ‘Tristan’, and the Austrians’ subsequent defeat, meant that Prussia became the dominant force among the German states, and eventually led to the great world wars of the 20th Century. Although Bavaria received a pleasing amount of autonomy after both the Austro-Prussian War and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, the fate of the southern German kingdom was sealed, and the Catholic south was rendered secondary to the Protestant north. The name of Otto von Bismarck is forever linked with this monumental shift of power, as the Prussian Chancellor manipulated all the states of Western Europe.
However, we need not get too involved in German history here, although the rise of Prussia caused earthquakes around the balance of power in Europe, particularly in France and Italy, and, to a certain extent, was reflected in the music of those countries. As we have seen in an earlier article, for many years Giuseppe Verdi was closely tied in with the beginnings of Italian nationhood, and in Belgium several events, including a riot at the Théâtre de la Monnaie after a performance of Auber’s opera, ‘La Muette de Portici’ in 1830, led directly to the creation of an independent Belgium.
In Britain, after the cataclysms of the wars against Napoleon, one imagines a steady industrial development, unhindered by deadly warfare, but the Victorian era involved costly combats in Crimea, India, Bhutan and China, as well as the bloody wars in South Africa, with the Boers and various indigenous peoples, nearly all provoked by Imperial or Colonial interests. The huge advantage for Britain and most of its population was the fact that all these conflicts occurred at some distance from the British Isles, and the astonishing fact that our country, and here we must refer to the entity of a Great Britain, including Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales, has never been invaded by a foreign foe since William the Conqueror’s Normans in 1066! That little stretch of water between Dover and Calais has been monumentally important in protecting us from alien invasion for centuries. Internally, it has not always been so serene, but this is not the time or place to get into that debate!
I am fascinated by the first night venues of many of the great works of music in the 19th century, since, despite all the political and military upheavals in Europe, particularly in that amazing century, the variety of cities and states which were host to great works of art was enormous. For example, you would expect St Petersburg to be the venue for premieres like Glinka’s ‘A Life for the Tsar’, Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony and Mussorgsky’s ‘Boris Godunov’, but perhaps not for Verdi’s ‘La Forza del Destino’. In fact, Verdi, who obviously wrote a great many operas, saw premieres in many different cities in Italy, and abroad: La Scala, Milan hosted quite a lot, but ‘The Sicilian Vespers’ opened in Paris, as did ‘Don Carlos’, and ‘Aida’ famously premiered in Cairo! ‘Don Carlo’, in the Italian version, opened in London.
It is fascinating too, to see how many famous composers were present at premieres of other famous composers. You can find multiple references in my series ‘A Singer’s Guide to the Great Composers’. An example is the first performance of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, in the newly built Bayreuth Festival Theatre, one of the wonders of the cultural world, to which flocked the cream of Europe’s aristocracy, both temporal and cultural, including Liszt, Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky and Bruckner.
Wagner was, of course, both a unifying and a divisive character, and on the night of our particular performance in 1865, people were expecting something new and different from the controversial figure about whom so much had already been written and said. His love life and his radical politics had seen him chased all over Europe, and his many creditors were in hot pursuit. Ludwig II’s ascension to the Bavarian throne had given the composer some respite from the hurly-burly of his life, but no-one really knew what to expect that night. The story of Tristan and Isolde was well known, particularly in northern Europe, as the original chivalric tale had been first told in the 12th century. The doomed love affair between the Cornish knight, Tristan, and the Irish princess, Isolde (or Iseult), their drinking of the love potion and the subsequent betrayal of Tristan’s uncle, King Mark of Cornwall, would have been a story with which the vast majority of that first audience would have been acquainted. What nobody could have foreseen was how Wagner’s music had developed since his last opera, the revised version of ‘Tannhäuser’, was heard in Paris in 1861. The original Tannhäuser (1845) and ‘Lohengrin’ (1850) had established Wagner’s reputation, and the furore over the Paris revision had meant that this Tristan premiere was eagerly awaited, by both the fans and the enemies, but no one could possibly have imagined what lay in store as the first chords played softly in the orchestra. Right from the start, one is aware of a new sound, a strange chromaticism unlike anything heard before, and, as the score develops, one is drawn into a web of utter sensuousness and voluptuousness which is quite overwhelming. For such a long opera, hardly anything happens on stage. Most of the story happens offstage, and what we see and hear are discussions, arguments, love scenes, betrayals and finally, death. Wagner was heavily influenced at this time by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer with his theories of philosophical pessimism, and was trying emotionally to deal with his feelings for the married Mathilde Wesendonck, and this gives a sense of doom-laden dread to the whole opera. And yet, my reaction to the music is deep empathy and sensual excitement, a sense of enormous well-being rather than sadness and depression. Wagner does this to many listeners, as the sheer beauty of the music transcends all else.
One of the chief regrets of my career is that I never sang King Mark in ‘Tristan’. It came up as a possibility once or twice, and I even travelled to Wuppertal to audition for the role. I apparently was close, but they wanted a German, so it fell through. By the way, do go to Wuppertal if you can. It has the only suspended monorail in the world as its U-Bahn, called the Schwebebahn, dating from 1901. After my audition, I rode the entire length of the system, zooming along in an upside-down carriage. It was amazing!
I wanted to sing Mark because, of all the Wagner bass roles, I think it fitted my voice and temperament best. It’s not too long a role, it sits perfectly in my best register, he is deeply sympathetic as a character, and, I think, the role needs a Lieder singer’s insight. I loved singing Pogner (in ‘Meistersinger’) and Fafner and Hagen in ‘The Ring’ and would love to have sung Daland (‘Dutchman’). I adored having the opportunity to sing Wotan at the Longborough Festival (maybe one of the highlights of my career) and was desperate to sing Gurnemanz in ‘Parsifal’ (another major regret, of which I must say I have had remarkably few!). None of these compensate quite for missing out on Kőnig Marke, but “you can’t always get what you want”, as someone once said!
An interesting adjunct to the story of that day in 1865 involves the two main protagonists in the premiere. Tristan was sung by Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld and Isolde by Malvina Schnorr von Carolsfeld! There’s a coincidence, one might say! Ludwig was the son of Julius S v C and nephew of another Ludwig S v C, artists both. Julius (1794-1872) was a hugely influential artist in 19th century Germany and was one of the founders of the “Nazarene” school of painting, which consciously looked back to the great Renaissance masters. Their work was primarily romantic and religious and can be compared to the Pre-Raphaelite school in Britain. Another delightful coincidence of the time is that Julius was commissioned to paint frescoes in several rooms of the Munich Residenz palace by Ludwig I of Bavaria, the father of Wagner’s patron, and the most important of these frescoes depicted the mediaeval Nibelungenlied, the basis of Wagner’s great tetralogy ‘Der Ring des Nibelungen’.
Ludwig the tenor, born in 1836, established his reputation at an early age, singing Wagner’s Lohengrin in a performance in 1861, which was seen by the young Crown Prince Ludwig. The most remarkable thing about this is that the tenor was only 25 when he sang Lohengrin, which is utterly miraculous, and goes beyond all vocal sense. Apparently, as Wagner began to despair of putting on ‘Tristan’ at all, after 70 days of fruitless rehearsal with the original cast, the newly crowned King Ludwig II persuaded the composer not only that Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld should take over as Tristan but that his wife, Malvina, 10 years older, but still only in her mid-30s, should sing Isolde. She was a half-Portuguese, half-German soprano who was now devoting herself to furthering her husband’s career, and so, as history relates, this husband and wife team played out the glorious and tragic love story of Tristan and Isolde for the first time on that day in June 1865. How a 28-year old could possibly sing the most exhausting role in all opera is a mystery, but Wagner was satisfied, especially after having personally auditioned the couple near Wiesbaden in 1862. Several performances followed soon after the premiere, and the tenor then sang Erik in Wagner’s ‘Flying Dutchman’ on July 1st. Tragically, this was his last Wagnerian role, as he died suddenly on July 21st, just after his 29th birthday. There was always speculation that the role of Tristan had killed him, since the weight and height of the part is unprecedented in all opera, and it is actually ridiculous that someone of that age could have sung the role at all, let alone four times in three weeks, but he was also seriously overweight and had suffered from a chill with rheumatic complications. Whatever the reason, it was a terrible blow to all concerned, and Malvina never sang again. She took up Spiritualism, and became obsessed with Wagner, being convinced she was destined to marry the composer. In her later years, she taught singing in Frankfurt and died at the age of 78 in Karlsruhe.
So there we have it. A truly historic day in music, hopefully put into historical context as well!
My favourite recording is the 1952 studio recording with Flagstad, Suthaus, Fischer-Dieskau and Greindl on EMI conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, and I also love the Karajan set with Dernesch, Vickers, Berry, Ludwig and Ridderbusch from 1972, although opinions differ on this one!
