Liebestod

"Liebestod" ([ˈliːbəsˌtoːt] German for 'love death') is the title often given to the final, dramatic music or aria from the opera Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner.^[1] It is the climactic end of the 1859-completed, 1865- premiered opera.^[2] In the scene, titular character Isolde sings into her death after encountering her lover Tristan's dead body, her material surroundings fading out as she envisions him alive once again.^[3][4]

Wagner initially titled the prelude "Liebestod" (Love-death) while he entitled the final piece "Verklärung" (Transfiguration).^[5] The confusion in title comes from an 1867 transcription his father-in-law Franz Liszt made which he called "Liebestod" (S.447); he prefaced his score with a four-bar motto from the love duet from act 2, which in the opera is sung to the words "sehnend verlangter Liebestod". Liszt's transcription became well known throughout Europe well before Wagner's opera reached most places, and it is Liszt's title for the final scene that persists. The transcription was revised in 1875.^[6][7]

The music is often used in film and television productions of doomed lovers.^[8]

• Bronfen, Elisabeth, Liebestod und Femme fatale. Der Austausch sozialer Energien zwischen Oper, Literatur und Film, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2004. ISBN 3-518-12229-0

• Act III: Mild und leise wie er lächelt: from Tristan und Isolde, Wagner's autograph manuscript in the Richard Wagner Foundation
• "Isolde's Liebestod", act 3, score and transcriptions: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
• Full text and some performances
• "Liebestod", concert performance on YouTube, Birgit Nilsson