The World's Best Music Book

Reading Wagner's works is rather unusual. One is accustomed to hear to the music and to the sung text without understanding what the characters are saying and it all ends plainly accepting that what they're saying is meaningful and probably beautiful. Tristan und Isolde is maybe the one Wagner's piece that offer the possibility to enter the overwhelming system of Wagner's conception of Gesamtkunstwerk in the shortest time. Although the usual running time of the opera can go from three to four hours, reading its libretto took me about four days. These operas aren't meant to be read (Wagner's German is demanding in every sense) nor even to be understood by hearing, but to be recieved as a whole transforming experience, thus linking itself with the original function of Greek Tragedy. This is powerful, exacting stuff, but the strain inverted on it is worth every thinking pause, every dictionary search. The epilogue by Egon Voss clarifies key-aspects for a better grasp and it's skillfully written.