Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde ushered in a new era from its opening notes. Composers as different from one another as Bruckner and Berg, Mahler and Messiaen, Schoenberg and Strauss, all responded vigorously to this new world of sound and feeling. Wagner declared that his work was “a monument to the loveliest of all dreams, in which, from the first to the last, love shall, for once, find utter redemption.”

This Beyond the Score production, featuring conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen and BTS creative director Gerard McBurney, presents the vivid story of the opera’s creation and its impact on musicians and artists of all kinds, and includes complete performances of the opera’s Prelude and Liebestod, among extensive other orchestral passages from this great opera.

Recorded in high definition at Orchestra Hall in February, 2013:

Esa-Pekka Salonen, conductor
Gerard McBurney, creative director and actor

Francis Guinan, actor
Ora Jones, actor
Bradley Armacost, actor
Michelle DeYoung, mezzo-soprano
John Goodwin, piano