At first, a simple chord in the prelude sets tonality trembling and opens the doors to night. Bidding farewell to dry land. Plunging into the unknown. Drowning. The song tears us away from ourselves and gives us a glimpse of both the past and the future. Everything is already contained in the first glance exchanged by the lovers.

During four hours of musical and mystical experience, Tristan and Isolde, Isolde and Tristan, will hate each other, love each other, separate, die and be reunited. In 1865, Richard Wagner - inspired by his passion for Mathilde Wesendonck - offered the world what was to become one of the monuments of Western art.

If tragedy is for kings, then Tristan und Isolde is a tragedy: there is Marke, there is the kingdom, there is war and there is the peace that is meant to be sealed by the marriage of the King of Cornwall to this Irish princess. Here, everything is public. Here, everything is political. The lovers are the playthings of issues beyond their control. Their choices, their actions affect the world and that is why the world stands in the way of their union. But this world can also be lost in a simple glance. This is where Wagner's radical gesture touches us: Tristan und Isolde tells us that a single moment has the power to call into question the construction of our lives.

Poet, director, future director of the Avignon Festival, Tiago Rodrigues likes to bring works down from their pedestal to share them with the public. His theatre unites in a breath the present of the stage with the ephemeral community of spectators. It takes the form of fragile and unusual rituals: performing an immense epic with two actors, having a handful of people learn the lines of a Shakespearean sonnet, bringing to the stage the prompter of the Teatro Nacional Dona Maria II in Lisbon.

With his creative partners - the dancers Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz - he takes up the myth of Tristan and Isolde and follows its movement through the ages - through transcriptions, rewritings, translations, misunderstandings, errors and wanderings. In his turn, he passes on the legend that he conjugates in the present, inscribing in the void these words that are bigger than our bodies.

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Tristan und Isolde, opera in three acts

First performed at the Royal Bavarian Court Theatre in Munich on 10 June 1865

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Reprise | Opéra de Lille | March 2024

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« Je cherche en vain une oeuvre qui ait la même dangereuse fascination, la même effrayante et suave infinitude que Tristan et Isolde. Le monde est pauvre pour celui qui n’a jamais été assez malade pour goûter cette ‘volupté de l’enfer’ » – ainsi parlait Nietzche, qui s’y connaissait. De tous les opéras du monde, pourtant riches en paroxysmes, on n’en trouvera pas un qui symbolise mieux la passion sans limite, de deux êtres « donnés entièrement l’un à l’autre pour ne plus vivre que l’amour ».

Peu d’opéras aussi peuvent rivaliser avec les splendeurs orchestrales, déployées quatre heures durant par Wagner dans un souffle ininterrompu, jusqu’au sommet inégalé de l’art lyrique que représente la célèbre mort d’Isolde… Partisan d’un théâtre à la fois populaire et exigeant, associant avec une rare maestria l’engagement et la délicatesse, le metteur en scène Tiago Rodrigues a suscité l’enthousiasme du public et de la critique avec des spectacles qui concilient les grandes histoires et celles du quotidien, les déchirements contemporains et la force des tragédies antiques.

Pour sa première incursion sur une scène lyrique, le nouveau directeur du Festival d’Avignon se saisit de la figure des amants éternels pour écrire « une histoire de l’histoire », comme une archive sauvage pour mieux regarder notre temps. Ses héros ne sont ni naïfs ni pris au piège, ils revendiquent leur transgression et choisissent de vivre dans les marges leur amour impossible, comme une parenthèse enchantée. Au monde qui voudrait les poursuivre, Tiago Rodrigues rappelle l’avertissement du poète Hölderlin : « Ne trouble jamais la paix des amants ! ».

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Retrouvez le texte de Tiago Rodrigues ici

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Restaging | StaatsTheater Wiesbaden | May 2026

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An evening to remember: star director Tiago Rodrigues, author and special guest of Maifestspiele 2026, takes a close look at Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde". His Director traces the chequered path of the Tristan myth through rewrites and ambiguities right up to the present day. In a huge archive, dancers Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz turn the pages of this story and bring it close to our present through various questions. Produced at the Opéra Nancy, Rodrigues' reading was met with enthusiasm there, not least because it "increases concentration on singing and listening" (Concerti). And this will be a real treat, because only young, internationally successful Wagner singers will be on stage at Wiesbaden: Ric Furman (Tristan) started his international career with prizes at Wagner competitions after an engagement at the local Staatstheater. Carla Filipcic Holm (Isolde) is one of Argentina's most sought-after sopranos and is currently taking European stages and the hearts of the press by storm. While Irene Roberts, celebrated from the Metropolitan Opera to the Bayreuth Festival, takes on the role of Brangäne, Tommi Hakala returns to Wiesbaden as Kurwenal after his success in the title role of "The Flying Dutchman". 

Wagner's music for "Tristan und Isolde" is also in a class of its own. With what is probably the most famous chord in the history of opera, the composer shattered tonality in 1865 and opened the door to the unknown. These sounds allow the audience to revel in the forbidden love between Isolde and Tristan and ultimately "drown in the breath of the world" with Isolde. Separation and union, dying and rising, war and peace characterise this trip of intense musical and mystical experiences. A case for the Wagner-tested Hessian State Orchestra under chief music director Leo McFall.