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strassburg s tristan c 1210 wagner s ostensible source the giant morgold demands tribute from king mark and is killed by tristan wounded he can only be cured by queen isolde of ireland mother to isolde when isolde discovers that she has helped heal her uncle s murderer she seeks vengeance gottfried died before finishing his poem stopping at around 19 000 lines it breaks off as tristan is debating whether to marry isolde of the white hands the poem was then continued by ulrich von türheim 1235 and heinrich von freiburg 1290 wagner heightens the drama by betrothing isolde to morgold isolde s desire thus shifts from revenging an uncle to revenging the man she loves and the only thing that remains of her love is rage she had faltered once in ireland when she lifted her sword to kill tristan as he lay recovering but as their eyes met she dropped the sword isolde has regrets as the pair sail to cornwall isolde plans to kill tristan and then herself she sings of her anguish and pain and persuades tristan that he must atone for killing morgold tristan acquiesces in her plan for them to drink poison together in gottfried s telling the two drink the potion accidentally but brangäne mezzo soprano ekaterina gubanova knowing isolde s intention intervenes and gives isolde the love potion intended for king marke instead of the poison at stage level the table is now set with an array of glass bottles filled with elixirs of various colors isolde s frustrated fury is now turned into desire for her enemy tristan s homosocial bonds with his king cannot withstand newly aroused passion we have reached the end of act i in act ii tristan and isolde tryst while the king is away hunting the scheming courtier melot thomas glass has set a trap as brangäne had warned isolde who ignores her the lovers sing their ecstatic and despairing love duet tristan is isolde isolde is tristan they sing listen to part of it here they are caught and king marke bass baritone ryan speedo green is heartsick and bewildered listen to an excerpt here on the stage level the table holds the remains of a feast and above magnified hands attempt to piece back together a broken plate on the table marke asks how can there be anything like truth if tristan is capable of betrayal and isolde marke may have owned her but he never possessed her he realizes melot wounds tristan and the curtain panels fade to grey signaling the end of the act as tristan s loyal companion kurwenal bass baritone tomasz konieczny catches tristan as he falls act iii demonstrates just how long a death scene can be drawn out at stage level the table is transformed into the operating table on which tristan lies surgical instruments are laid out on a cloth kurwenal anxiously wonders if tristan is sleeping or dead tristan repeatedly revives asking after isolde kurwenal wonders again is given hope again tristan moves from the plane of the stage to the circle above accompanied by dancers in white which i found unnecessary and distracting whose ghostly presence makes it clear that this iteration of the circle is a threshold heaven or perhaps a blissful nothingness lies beyond does kurwenal see the white sails each time that kurwenal answers no but soon tristan falls back as if dead and then revives to ask again isolde is too late of course tristan dies on the table as she bends over him throughout the opera isolde has worn green tristan blue the costumes are medievalish they register as mere costumes and deliberately so i think the fabric is too shiny the trim seems cheaply made as if to remind us that what we see are people in dress up in this final act isolde wear a voluminous rather shapeless green satin gown and as she enters the scene the audience immediately sees that she is pregnant she crawls onto the table on which tristan lies and gives birth marke enters and explains that brangäne has confessed to administering the love potion and marke now forgives isolde and tristan who can be faulted for the compulsions of rapturous desire isolde moves from the plane of the stage where humans dwell to the circle above the plane of the eternal where the dancers in white annoyingly return making their alvin ailey moves her green dress has been exchanged for a simple white shift a light grows behind her into which she will soon walk but first she sings a final aria familiarly known as the liebestod love death song though wagner preferred verklärung transfiguration this aria is intended to release the disharmonic tension built up over the four and a half hours of the opera isolde sings of watching tristan rise radiant to dwell on an even higher plane than the stage can offer is it only she who can hear him singing she finds herself rushing upwards to meet him the narrative arc of this aria as some critics have ventured to suggest seems to move from initial arousal through to orgasm slavoj zižek called it orgasmic self extinction the love in love death is as physical as it is numinous she dies marke takes the baby and with brangäne exits the stage the opera is over in this final act the table seems to gesture toward the ending of jean delannoy and jean cocteau s l éternel retour 1943 tristan patrice jean marais and isolde natalie madeleine sologne lie in death side by side on an upturned boat that transforms into a gisant a tomb effigy the baby in sharon s adaptation of wagner s tristan und isolde might be read as a materialization of l éternel retour a concept cocteau introduces in the opening crawl in the film here translated eternal return a title borrowed from nietzsche means that the same legends are reborn again and again without the heroes knowledge eternal return of simple circumstances is the base of all great love stories this registers as an exquisite tautology given that nietzsche was so taken with wagner s opera if the allusion to l éternel retour is deliberate it is rather obscure how many medievalists and cinephiles are in the audience each night at the met or in the movie theatre it doesn t really help us understand why sharon put a baby where there has never been one it undermines cocteau s mis reading of nietzsche s point that some of us are caught in an endless cycle of destructive passion from which we cannot escape and the only wagnerian response is amor fati or perhaps sharon wanted to give us a comfortable ending new life traditionally signifies hope or is the baby a booby prize for marke but there is yet another possibility one that suggests that sharon was not willfully rewriting wagner through staging perhaps sharon understands something about wagner s psychology his apparent fervid and overripe romanticization of eros as woman capital w in 1854 as wagner first began thinking about tristan und isolde he wrote to franz liszt and declared a desire for a female spirit in which i could completely submerge myself that would hold me entire how little would i then need of this world as quoted in eva rieger richard wagner s women at the time wagner then married to minna planer was caught up in what we would today call a head affair in this case an all consuming obsessive affair with the married mathilde wesendonck sexual consummation was out of the question tristan und isolde it could be argued became the sublimated substitute what could be more of a tribute to woman than highlighting the most transcendent expression of her essence birthing a baby given all the controversy and provocations that wagner and his operas have caused given the debates about how to make sense of tristan und isolde we might read the baby in yet another way its presence on stage deconstructs the entire opera so that it goes poof es verschwindet this creates the necessary space for the next production thus the opera writ large is kept alive posted by ricutz at 7 52 pm email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest march 2 2026 martin a knight of the seven kingdoms they have really good puppet shows in dorne hbo hbo max s six part series a knight of the seven kingdoms reviewed by kevin j harty ph d la salle university harty lasalle edu hbo hbo max s six part series a knight of the seven kingdoms is based on the first of three novellas by george r r martin usually referred to collectively as the tales of dunk and egg the formula is that of a buddy film or series or even a bromance paired are a hulking rather thick hedge knight ser duncan the tall a k a dunk peter claffey and a precocious bald headed boy egg dexter sol ansell who serves as his squire hedge knights are the most errant of knights errant wandering the seven kingdoms in search of lords to serve and deeds of derring do to carry out theirs is a rough unsatisfying and unheralded life such a knight is ser arlan of pennytree danny webb perhaps most notable for the length and girth of a shaft other than his lance given a quick shot that we get of him emerging naked from a tent post coitus ser arlan sleeps rough as he wanders hither and yon with his squire dunk who as a boy was rescued from a life of penury in flea bottom when ser arlan dies dunk whom his master may or may not have knighted decides to set out as a knight viewers of the series and readers of this review may recognize that a knight of the seven kingdoms shares this plot element and several others with brian helgeland s 2001 film a knight s tale though the series does not have an as over the top musical score as the film does in the first episode dunk buries ser arlan and after taking a very impressive public dump heads off with arlan s sword shield and three horses to a great tournament being held at ashford where dunk hopes to test his mettle and earn real knighthood stopping for a rest at an inn dunk encounters a motley crew many three sheets to the wind and leaves unknowingly at first with the bald headed boy egg in tow egg wants to serve as dunk s squire but dunk has a bigger problem he cannot prove that he is indeed a knight and needs someone to vouch for his bona fides in ashford dunk and egg watch a puppet show staged by tanselle from dorne tanzyn crawford in that show a fiery dragon is slain by a knight dunk is immediately infatuated with tanselle egg with the puppets dunk searches without much success for someone to vouch for him until prince baelor targaryen bertie carvel remembering ser arlan s service to him agrees to do so dunk needs to create his own coat of arms and turns to the talented tanselle for help he then sells his favorite horse sweetfoot to the blacksmith steely pate youssef kerkour for a suit of armor dunk waxes and wanes in his enthusiasm for the tournament and the life of a knight especially when he is asked to participate in a rigged tournament designed to recoup the funds spent to stage the event as the series progresses the politics behind the tournament come into relief nearly everyone hates the targaryens and not without reason when they are not drunken cowards like daeron henry ashton they are cheating bullies like his brother aerion finn bennett when aerion watches tanselle s puppet show he reacts with violence breaking her finger for insulting his family tied as they are to dragons dunk then attacks aerion knocking out one of his teeth only egg s intervention saves dunk because it turns out that he is daeron and aerion s younger brother who shaved his head of the telltale familial silver locks because he is ashamed to be identified with his older brothers dunk is then arrested when daeron asserts that he kidnapped egg targaryen word seems to be law but dunk asks for trial by combat which he is granted on the condition that he engage in an ancient ritual known as the trial by seven two sets of seven knights battle each other to determine who is innocent or guilty aerion assembles a group of six impressive knights but dunk keeps coming up short until none other than baelor targaryen declares for him to uphold the honor of knighthood the ensuing tournament is a muddy and bloody mess horses are slaughtered and knights are maimed until a badly wounded dunk forces an equally badly wounded aerion to yield the victory proves pyrrhic as baelor collapses dead into dunk s arms on the field of battle dunk is abject in his grief over the prince s death and once again unsure about how much he really wants to be a knight maekar targaryen sam spruell mindful of his late brother s kindnesses to dunk invites dunk to summerhall to complete his proper training as a knight and to tutor egg in the duties of a squire dunk demurs and says that he is only willing to squire egg on the road maekar refuses dunk s counterproposal so dunk rides off on his own soon joined by egg who lies and says that his father has changed his mind about dunk squiring him on the road the two then set off to explore the seven kingdoms though egg allows there are nine not seven kingdoms an altered final title card inserts a 9 over the 7 beginning egg insists with dorne because they have really good puppet shows in dorne the events in a knight of the seven or nine kingdoms take place almost a century before those in a game of thrones a second and third series are promised dramatizing the remaining two books in the dunk and egg trilogy much lower budgeted and differently focused than thrones knight nonetheless references and anticipates the internecine strife than informs the chronologically later dynastically focused series but knight is intentionally microcosmic it is not concerned with the rise and fall of great kingdoms no one unharnesses any dragons to lay waste to cities and towns the only dragon is a puppet there are no great castles or cites no windswept vistas or enchanting isles instead of epic battles we get a ragtag tournament fought in a seemingly endless downpour the sun rarely shines the cameras point downward at the earth and mud and at the people who eke out their existence there as peasants prostitutes tradespeople petty bureaucrats and the fringes of the noble and royal societies celebrated in thrones knight focuses on the glue that supposedly holds all the seven or nine kingdoms together knighthood it offers a variation on the arthurian theme of the fair unknown dunk born in the slums of flea bottom eventually becomes the hedge knight ser duncan the tall a man trying to rise up in a society that keeps pushing him down he is not the brightest though he certainly doesn t lack determination the series pairs him with an at first unlikely sidekick prince aegon targaryen a bald headed boy wise beyond his years fascinated as any child might be with puppets egg at the same time trains dunk s battle steed constantly gives him pointers about knighthood and seamlessly switches from funny to straight man in his banter with dunk nuance is not dunk s strong suit but it is egg s forte cable and television in general have recently offered few buddy road series as quietly enjoyable as a knight of the seven kingdoms and i certainly look forward to seasons two and three and the further adventu...