Isolda is lying on a couch, her face buried in her hands; Brangaena
stands by. In the sailor's song she has fancied some gibe at herself,
for she is being carried off against her will by the man she loves to
wed an old man she has never seen. She starts up in rage, and then,
realizing her position, asks Brangaena where they are. Now, Wagner, if
he scarcely considered the prima donna, took great pains with the lesser
characters, and Brangaena never opens her mouth without giving us
something of magical beauty and tenderness. Quite unconscious of the
impending tragedy, she remarks that they are drawing near Cornwall, and
that before evening they will land there. The gently-rolling sea is kept
before us by an accompaniment made out of a phrase of the sailor's
song. "They will land"--that means to Isolda that she will become the
property of the old man she has never seen, and lose for ever the man
she has no hope of gaining, the man whom she has every good reason to
hate and despise. This is a drama of passion pitted against
reason--against everything excepting passion, and Wagner loses no chance
of making the situation clear. Here, as in every other opera, he is, if
not first a dramatist, yet always a dramatist. "Never!" screams Isolda,
and curses the vessel and all that it holds. Astounded, Brangaena tries
to comfort her; but Isolda is a woman, and means to have her way. There
must be plenty of air in such a deck-tent, but Wagner, with a spite that
is itself somewhat feminine, makes her, in feminine fashion, complain of
a want of it; so one of the curtains is drawn aside, and she can see
what she wants to see: Tristan standing on what seems to be the prow,
but is really the stern, of the vessel. There he stands, the man she
hates and loves, and shows no sign of discomposure, although the
helmsman invariably holds the tiller at such an angle that the ship must
be gyrating like a teetotum, thus offering a simple, if coarse,
explanation of Isolda's qualms. The music up till now has been made up
of the fragment last quoted of the sailor's song, and one of the love
themes--a simple phrase of four notes, out of which lengthy passages are
woven. When the curtain is drawn a fragment of the sea-song is again
heard, and then this love phrase is taken up by the orchestra and
filled with sinister, smouldering passion. Isolda's anger gathers and
mounts against Tristan, and when this theme arrives