Tristan und Isolde

Summary

Tristan und Isolde, WWV 90, is a music drama in three acts by Richard Wagner set to a German libretto by the composer, loosely based on Gottfried von Strassburg's medieval 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult. First conceived in 1854, the music was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered at the Königliches Hoftheater und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865, with Hans von Bülow conducting. While it is performed by opera companies, Wagner preferred the term Handlung for Tristan to distinguish its structure of continuous narrative flow as distinct from that of conventional opera at the time, which consisted of recitatives punctuated by showpiece arias, which Wagner regarded with great disdain.