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What is love? Love is not only a longing, a desire,

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but rather, love is a very, very deep feeling of acceptance.

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And [Isolde] goes through this development. And she also says:

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Tristan can only express his love

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in that night, in death; these social circumstances

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do not allow for anything else.

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And that is why it is totally clear for Isolde.

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She goes through this development, so she says:

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she must go to her death with him.

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That is her development.

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Only then is their love complete.

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Dying is not always a bad thing!

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The same is true of the Love Death.

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The Love Death is a merging into something greater,

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“in the universal stream of the world-breath –

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to drown, to founder – unconscious – utmost rapture!”

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My God, is there anything more beautiful?

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Most of Wagner’s operas, or actually all of them

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that I now know, end in a utopia of a better world.

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I believe that this numbness of love or lovelessness of power

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that it’s about must always be relevant.

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And it is actually about our preconditions  to be able to transcend.

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If you equate that to Safranski’s idea of “Evil”,

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for example, then

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we are really there where ethics must play out in the aesthetics,

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and vice versa.

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And I find it very interesting:

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to activate oneself in Richard Wagner’s laboratory and

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to question precisely these reception structures, because here

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it is about a very obtrusive kind of  seduction in music.

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It is exactly the method of the incredible, irrational grandeur

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of music that harbours a thousand dangers,

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especially in the manipulability

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of the masses, and I believe

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that Wagner remains a demon, and in a certain sense

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is also transfigured – now as always.

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And I believe it is a mechanism which to a large degree

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sustains his art – now as always.

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And that in no way can we

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do justice to the enlightener Richard Wagner

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through the reception of his art.

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Or that we are very, very… I mean, that maybe we also flee

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to a great degree into unprecision, time after time.

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The contradiction is per se consensus in this work, and

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that can be nowhere better seen than

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in the conflict between Brünnhilde and Wotan.

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There, of course, you get into quite a quandary

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as to the idea of women’s emancipation.

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But there, too, you simply have to always see it

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in a psychological way.

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Then it works on other levels:

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Man is not man, woman is not woman,

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but rather the whole time it is about the idea of unity,

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which was burst apart under the most diverse perversions and

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has since then been trying to reconstitute or find itself.

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What we read here is all pre-Freudian and then

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culminates in Freud, who for his part

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has built his nest on totally different levels and

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directions due to the fact

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that someone takes emancipation a bit further,

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but also… I think, that is also the price

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we must pay for it.

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And that is mirrored in the 20th century.

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In other words, that mankind has gone too far and

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opened Pandora’s Box

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without knowing how to close it again.

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And I believe in this matter,

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we continue to operate in this context,

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as always, but all of the premonitions are completely certified and

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present and articulated in Wagner’s works, and

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still using harmonious means,

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but always going right up to the limit,

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and that makes it so ambivalent and

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so attractive and gives us a feeling of security

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to let ourselves fall and let ourselves go.

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And that is the seduction that lies behind it and

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the great religious danger that I see in this connection.

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But I believe that as long as this longing and

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this quest for meaning

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lasts we will be able to get a

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whole lot out of it without being in danger of being hoodwinked,

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in as much as the topic is and remains contradictory.

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It is never about the actual fulfilment in this art,

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but rather about the chance, the longing for something,

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and the dangers it involves.

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For me, Venus stands for a model of life or

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a model of existence in general. She is not so human,

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she is the goddess of love, no question about it.

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But with Wagner it is always also about prototypes

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for a human existence.

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But after all, Venus is not just the Frau Schmidt from next door,

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but of course she represents something higher,

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the sensuous being,

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the object of desire, but also excess and tedium.

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That’s why Tannhäuser eventually wants to get away

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from her, because it’s simply too much for him,

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too much sensuality, too much of a good thing.

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He simply wants to live

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like a normal man again.

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That’s what Venus stands for.

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I believe in any case that every person has very,

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very many different sides and

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is not merely a uniform colour; instead I hope everyone

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has a bit of  this seduction of Venus,

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but then also something very rational or else this pure,

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chaste sensuality which Elisabeth has.

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For me, the story of Tristan and Isolde

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is the story of the path from passion to love:

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the passion that it holds, the vulnerability,

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the injury, the rage that grows because of it,

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the anger, the revenge, the feeling of deceit, and

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beneath that the longing that is there,

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the longing for love, for joining in union.

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And in the second act something wonderful happens

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which develops out of this crazy passion, where they

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finally encounter each other and have time for one another,

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but where they first have to work out

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the things that had hurt each other.

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And that is very important.

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There is namely a point in Act 2

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in the famous love duet

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where it could all break apart again.

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It’s a moment when you say:

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If they don’t manage to get their act

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together and to understand and accept each other,

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then the love or the passion

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could come to an end!

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But that is precisely the ingenious thing I see in Wagner.

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They pass through this moment and accept each other.

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It begins when Tristan repeats: “Descend,

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O Night of love”, and for Isolde,

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this is like he is saying: I confirm it.

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He is saying “Yes!” to something.

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The second step is that he begins a phrase and

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she completes the phrase.

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And at the end she even begins the phrase

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and he completes it.

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And at the very end they come together and

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they both sing the same verse.

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That is so ingeniously composed

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that the union now already takes place.

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And for that reason “Tristan and Isolde” is for me

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a clear example of real, consummate love.

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I know that it was fashionable,

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under Heiner Müller and others,

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to have doubts

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that this love was always presupposed –

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and actually they were only in love with the phenomenon of love.

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In the meantime, I am not at all of this opinion.

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I think: No, just the opposite!

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Through acceptance of the other one in their strengths

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and weaknesses, their repulsiveness and viciousness –

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and then to love. That is actually true love,

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and Tristan and Isolde confirm this for us.