Thanks. So what's up with this "Tristan & Isolde" movie that comes out today? I saw a poster for it in the mall a while back, and the tagline is, "Before there was Romeo and Juliet, there was Tristan and Isolde."
Which is technically true, but the Romeo and Juliet legend existed before Shakespeare -- and no one today would be shameless enough to just do a movie about the "original" Romeo and Juliet legend without using Shakespeare's immortal words and dramatic construction. It would take a peculiar mix of arrogance and bad taste to do that. Without Shakespeare, the story is dull and lifeless -- two teenagers fall in love, but their families hate eachother, so they kill themselves. Boo hoo. The story would be nothing without Shakespeare's peculiar insights into humanity.
Similarly with Tristan and Isolde. It's one hell of a boring story without Wagner's mix of Schopenhauerian philosophy and the deepest human angst and longing for death, as expressed through the music. Apparently this movie also has an original soundtrack. What self-respecting composer could go around saying, "I wrote the music for Tristan and Isolde . . . the movie"?
On Nilsson, I think she was better as Bruennhilde and as Strauss's Elektra than as Isolde, by the way.
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