The Vin herbé at La Monnaie

Sirs, would it please you to listen to a beautiful story of love and death ? It!tells of Tristan and Isolde, the queen. Listen to how they loved each other with great joy and with great mourning, then how they died the same day, he because of her and she because of him.’ In his ‘oratorio profane d’après Le Roman de Tristan et Iseut de Joseph Bédier’, written between 1938 and 1941, the Swiss composer Frank Martin tells the dramatic story of the love between Tristan and Isolde in eighteen scenes, from the crossing from Cornwall to their deaths. Unlike his great predecessor Richard Wagner, Martin only used a small ensemble of twelve singers, seven instruments and a piano, but in this way achieved such an intensity and intimacy that this work can undoubtedly be counted among the masterpieces of the 20th!century.