Tristan and Isolde

The year 1965 marks the 100th anniversary of the first performance in Munich of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. This opera has long been recognized as one of the supreme masterpieces in the literature of music, and it is certainly one of the most significant in terms of its influence on all subsequent music.

But one should also realize the importance of Wagner’s text for Tristan as a lanmark in Romantic drama. It is, for instance, cited in Francis Fergusson’s Idea of a Teater as a “crucial instance of the art of drama, because it is comparable in depth and artistic integrity with the Neoclassic theater and with the Greeks … it is the celebration of a mystical motive … the mystic obedience to passion itself.”

This new bilingual edition of Wagner’s dramatic poem includes the original German text and a splendid new translation that is intended to be sung as well as read, and will, therefore, be invaluable to students of both music and literature. Stewart Robb, who has made this special translation, also translated Wagner’s entire Ring of the Nibelung for Dutton Paperbacks and prepared the official English librettos of Wagner’s Flying Dutchman, Lohengrin, and Parsifal used by the Metropolitan Opera in New York.