Tristan und Isolde

How do you listen to a four-hour opera? Tom Service (from the BBC's Radio 3 The Listening Service) considers the extraordinary impact of Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, a medieval romance that in Wagner's hands became a highly-charged erotic drama of unfulfilled longing. It scandalized and over-excited early audiences in the 1860s, and it still has a profound effect on listeners. How come? Tom Service explores the influence of the philosopher Schopenhauer on Wagner's thinking, and how the composer's own love-life may have influenced this piece. And musicologist Kenneth Hamilton takes Tom through the radical musical structures in this piece, which somehow manage to remain unresolved over long stretches of music. Did one special chord really change music forever?