With "Tristan und Isolde," Richard Wagner draws on an ancient Celtic myth from the Arthurian legend that tells of a doomed love: Two people fall for each other through a love potion, and their longing leads to death. Sparse in external action, the work contains a fundamental and dramatic conflict: The suffering from love expresses existential necessity, from which only love itself seems capable of delivering. Music author Robert Maschka demonstrates that the opera is of particular significance not only because of this elevation into the philosophical but also due to the groundbreaking boldness of its music, which is nothing less than a harbinger of modernity.