Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde

Arthur Groos is Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Cornell University, where he has taught since 1973. A member of the departments of German Studies, Medieval Studies and Music, his musical interests focus on issues of music and culture, and opera, especially Wagner, Puccini and modern opera. His books include Giacomo Puccini: La bohème (with Roger Parker, 1986), Romancing the Grail: Genre, Science, and Quest in Wolfram's Parzival (1995), as well as the collections Reading Opera (1988), Madama Butterfly: Fonti e documenti (2005) and seven other edited volumes. Founding co-editor of the Cambridge Opera Journal, he has served on the editorial/advisory boards of JAMS and Opera Quarterly. He is also general editor of Cambridge Studies in Opera and co-editor of Transatlantische Studien.

Introduction Arthur Groos; Synopsis: Wagner's prose draft (1857); 1. Public and private life: on the genesis of Tristan und Isolde and the Wesendonck Lieder John Deathridge; 2. Between memory and desire: Wagner's libretto and late Romantic subjectivity Arthur Groos; 3. The Prelude and the play Joseph Kerman; 4. In the realm of the senses: sight, sound, and the music of desire in Tristan und Isolde Thomas Grey; 5. A mantle of sound for the night: timbre in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde Jürgen Maehder; 6. Staging Tristan Stewart Spencer; 7. Tristan's traces Steven Huebner; Select bilbiography.