Kurwenal, however, does not know this,
and defends his master's castle with the last drop of his blood, dying
at last at Tristan's feet, while Isolde chants her death-song over the
fallen hero in strains of celestial loveliness.
'Tristan und Isolde' is the 'Romeo and Juliet' of music. Never has the
poetry and tragedy of love been set to music of such resistless beauty.
But love, though the guiding theme of the work, is not the only passion
that reigns in its pages. The haughty splendour of Isolde's injured
pride in the first act, the beautiful devotion of the faithful Kurwenal,
and the blank despair of the dying Tristan, in the third, are depicted
with a magical touch.
Some years ago it was the fashion, among the more uncompromising
adherents of Wagner, to speak of 'Tristan und Isolde' as the completest
exposition of their master's theories, because the chorus took
practically no share in the development of the drama. Many musicians,
on the other hand, have felt Wagner's wilful avoidance of the
possibilities of choral effect to detract seriously from the musical
interest of the opera, and for that reason have found 'Tristan und
Isolde' less satisfying as a work of art than 'Parsifal' or 'Die
Meistersinger,' in which the chorus takes its proper place. It is
scarcely necessary to point out that, opera being in the first instance
founded upon pure convention, there is nothing more illogical in the
judicious employment of the chorus than in the substitution of song for
speech, which is the essence of the art-form.
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