Debussy, Wagner and Strauss

Prepare for a heartbreakingly beautiful program as conductor Fabien Gabel leads the MSO through the thrilling illicit encounters and devastating separation of forbidden love.

Adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck’s symbolist play of the same name, Debussy’s 1898 suite of music from his the opera Pelléas and Mélisande tells the tale of doomed lovers through swirling, impressionistic musical language.

If a single work had to be named to have shaped the course of history, it may well be Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde. Tristan demonstrated the profound capacity of music to create drama and reveal the inner emotions of characters on a level that was, at that time, unimaginable. The opera’s bookends – Prelude and Liebestod (Love-Death) – ache with the passion and catastrophe of these lovers’ fates.