Tristan und Isolde is a perfect opera, but where are the perfect performers and, just as important, the perfect listeners to do it justice? What very often happens to me in a fine performance is that I am wholly caught up in the drama of Act I, which, for all its revolutionary musical means, is a readily comprehensible confrontation of two people who half-know what they feel but are determined to conceal it, until that is no longer possible.
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