Tristan und Isolde, Richard Wagner

A ship is approaching the Cornwall coast. On board: a melancholic knight and an indomitable princess. Tristan is bringing Isolde to the old King Marke, whom she is to marry. I'd rather die, she thinks – but the death potion in which she seeks escape turns out to be a love potion. Even before they go ashore, Tristan and Isolde are condemned to be one another's prisoners. Their forbidden love is so all-consuming that it can only result in an ecstatic death. In his musical drama Tristan und Isolde, Richard Wagner portrays desire in sound. Yearning melodies, endless dissonances on the verge of redemption: even the most dispassionate listener will be defenceless against this music. In the French filmmaker Philippe Grandrieux, Wagner is given an ideal travelling companion. Grandrieux' radical films bathe in a sensual twilight where sound and image merge. His directing places Isolde in the focal point of Wagner's opera and asserts itself as a fever dream in which music, video and dance become one.