Word: tristan
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...Bulow, widow of Richard Wagner, mother of Siegfried. Eighty-six years old, she dominates everything. Though her once sharp eyes are filmed with age, her aristocratic nose appears to be more pointed than ever. She attends rehearsals, but no one is allowed to speak to her. A performance of Tristan was scheduled. She vetoed it. It was cancelled. She is still jealous of Mathilde Wesendonck, the composer's inspiration for the figure of love-sick Isolde...
Operas abound in fights of all kinds, and always have. There is a sword-fight in Tristan, a bullfight in Carmen, a dagger-fight in Cavalleria Rusticana, a gunfight in The Girl of the Golden West, a Chinese axe-fight in L'Oracolo, not to mention word-fights of staggering intensity, especially when a prima-donna screams in Italian and a baritone roars his defy in French...
...Knight Tristan, surprised in a compromising situation...
...story which Wagner used for his Tristan is a story which has woven its spell around many another artist in tone or words. Poets without number have used it. It is perhaps the parent of the triangle-play; the plot is one which, if new, might cause as great a stir as that of Eugene O'Neill's All God's Chillun Got Wings (see Page 16). For Queen Isolde has been given in marriage to King Mark; yet after a sip of a magic and non-Volstead potion she falls into the arms of Knight Tristan...
Eventually the lovers are foiled. They are surprised in a compromising situation in Mark's garden (after a lengthy love-duet). Tristan, badly wounded, dies in the last act. And Isolde expires on his body, chanting the famous Liebestod. Hardened operagoers are in the habit of arriving in time for Wagner's soul-stirring prelude, and then marching out. They reappear for the great love-duet, and go out again. Finally they slink into their seats-just in time for the Liebestod. But let it here be said that this last performance, featuring Herr Curt Taucher as Tristan...