A love trauma between life and death: Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde is one of the most radical works in music history. With unprecedented emotional density and musical tension, the opera tells of a love that defies all social boundaries - and tragically fails precisely because of this. At Theater Münster, the monumental work unfolds in a new interpretation between desire, guilt and redemption.
Although Tristan once killed her fiancé, the Irish king's daughter Isolde saved his life and fell in love with the nephew of the hostile King of Cornwall. Isolde is now to become the wife of his uncle, King Marke. The love she shares with Tristan is doomed to fail. However, she breaks all boundaries and allows neither conventions nor moral standards to stop her. But the legitimate living out of love remains a utopia and is condemned by nature to be finally fulfilled only in death. With Tristan and Isolde (premiered at the Royal Court and National Theatre in Munich in 1865), Richard Wagner created a masterpiece of German Romanticism and at the same time one of the cornerstones of modern music.
Premiere November 2
Further performances: November 8 and 22, December 14, 2025, January 11 and 25, 2026
