A huge grateful singout to our friend Louise Franks who let me know that the Metropolitan Opera is providing free opera at metopera.org. This week is all Wagner. At Princeton I majored in English and German Literature. Half of my departmental courses were in English Literature and the other half were in German Literature. My thesis was titled "The Artist in the Works of James Joyce and Thomas Mann". I still practice my "German" muscle occasionally.
This afternoon I have luxuriated in streaming three Acts of "Tristan und Isolde". It is one of my favorites. I took a semester course on Wagner as an elective which culminated in the entire class attending a live performance of Tristan at the Met. We were seated upstairs in draped booths with small lights (we could not see the stage) so we could follow the opera with our music books. It was totally wondrous.
After graduation I toured Europe with two friends. I made reservations for us to see "Tristan und Isolde" at Bayreuth where the theater was created by Wagner for his works. The orchestra was down below in front and out of sight but the acoustics were perfection. Unfortunately they changed the dates on us and we got to see Parsifal instead.It was very moving and I still treasure the experience. The performance started in the afternoon. We ate dinner after the first act and dessert after the second act.
When I got married (in 1961) one of my gifts to Jan was a recording of the complete Tristan und Isolde. It was partly out of my love of the opera and partly in honor of her German heritage. I have to admit that in retrospect that as in the legend I have always believed in the lasting power of a 'love potion'. It worked for me.
I looked in the basement cabinet where I still have a few classic vinyl records and there was the album: five 33.3 records with a booklet.
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