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Title: Helps with the background, but not the music.
Review: What this lecture does well is show the relationship of the story of Tristan and Isolde to the soap opera antics of Wagner (Tristan), his wife Mina (Brangaene?) and their Swiss neighbors, the Wesendoncks (King Marke and Isolde). But I wanted something that would help me get through this four hour opera without falling asleep. The musical examples were not sufficient. There are apparently recurring leitmotifs that correspond to Tristan, Isolde, the love portion and other elements of the story. They were mentioned but not explicitly pointed out. Thus this CD can't be compared to the great job that Deryck Cooke did inAn Introduction to Der Ring des Nibelungen.
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