Tristan und Isolde

Wagner interrupted work on the Ring to write Tristan und Isolde between 1857 and 1859, in Zurich and then in Venice and Lucerne, while entangled with Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of his patron. He expected a piece theatres could stage easily; instead Vienna abandoned it after some seventy rehearsals as unperformable. The premiere came on 10 June 1865 at the Hofoper in Munich under Hans von Bülow, whose wife Cosima was by then Wagner's partner. Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld, the first Tristan, died within weeks of the fourth performance, aged twenty-nine.