In Search of Ecstasy: The wellsprings of ‘Tristan und Isolde’ are traced by Christopher Morris

English-language Wagner research has not been blessed with an abundance of book-length studies devoted to Tristan und Isolde. Given the unique spell that Tristan seems to cast over Wagnerians, might we not have expected more? Perhaps the problem is precisely Tristan’s strange effect, as though the work itself represented an extension of Isolde’s brewing powers, a draught capable of generating the sort of aestheticised intoxication Nietzsche famously associated with Act III. Or would it be more apt to liken the effect to an operatic Jerusalem syndrome? This is not to say that there haven’t been fine articles or longer studies devoted to aspects of Tristan (Robert Bailey’s analytical account of the Prelude and Transfiguration springs to mind), but full-length scholarly accounts of Tristan as a whole have been thin on the ground – until recently, that is.