Wagner: Overtures

I do not know if Georg Solti is a Wagner specialist, but he led the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in a well-applauded interpretation of Wagner's most well-known overtures to his operas: The Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser, and Tristan and Isolde.

Wagner's overtures follow a dichotomy of ideas: two colliding motifs, or opposing themes play themselves out. In the Flying Dutchman, the overture introduces the Dutchman's struggle to free himself from being made to live at sea under the terms of a curse, with the release motif representing the love of woman that will finally set him free.

Similarly, Tannhauser's carnal (bacchanalian, in fact) desires for Venus and her world clashes with his responsibility as a Christian knight. Again, the overture introduces these two competing motifs, with one finally winning over the other.

And probably the most profound (or boring, depending on your inclination) love story ever, Tristan and Isolde. Wagner inluded the Liebestod to the overture in the concert version. Thus, the beginning and the ending of the story. Here, the themes do not necessarily collide, but complement each other. The delicate introduction is among the most beautiful Wagner ever wrote, a paean to, should I say it, erotic love. (I watched the entire opera on DVD, and I lost count of the number of times I shouted, "Oh please, get a room, will ya?). The Liebestod, erroneously translated as a Song of Death, actually implies love that transcends death, a final bonding of souls that even death couldn't break apart.

For the performance, I prefer Abaddo and the Berlin Philharmonic over Solti and Chicago. But Solti's dazzling take on Tannhauser is a class of its own, it brought the house down. The Tristan prelude was sensitive and impressive, although I have heard a better interpretation by Zubin Mehta in Munich during the full performance of the opera.