Tristan and Isolde – two names that are inseparable, their hearts and fates inextricably linked. Two absolute emotional extremists who live out their love with a radicality that leaves no room for other people and can only find fulfilment in the utter abandon of death.

Richard Wagner composed ‘Tristan und Isolde’ during a twelve-year creative break from work on the ‘Ring des Nibelungen’ as a creative way of coming to terms with his love for the married Mathilde Wesendonck and his intellectual fascination with Arthur Schopenhauer and Buddhism – but also because Wagner, with his notorious “genius for borrowing”, was in urgent need of a financial success. Now it is impossible to imagine an operatic repertoire that does not include Wagner’s landmark score.

After the bravura ‘Ring am Rhein,’ another exclusive Wagner experience joins the repertoire: the distinguished conductor and composer Eberhard Kloke has created an intimate arrangement of the ‘Tristan’ score for the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in which the orchestra also becomes the protagonist in spatial terms. The production by Dorian Dreher takes Kloke’s musically and dramaturgically conceived interpretation, described as a “narrative and psychological profile”, and adds an artistic perspective that is closely aligned to the music. read less