aking 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

[Illustration: Some bars of music]

it is the announcement of her determination that death for both of them
shall end an impossible situation. This, however, we do not learn until
later; for the moment the theme conveys little special meaning to us. It
is when we hear the drama a second time that its appalling tragic force
is felt. Isolda tells Brangaena to command Tristan to come to the
pavilion. Kurvenal, his servant, sings a scoffing song, in which all the
sailors join, in spite of Tristan's endeavour to stop them. Brangaena
rushes back and hurriedly closes the curtains. Isolda, half-crazed,
tells the whole story as it occurred previous to the rising of the
curtain--how she nursed the wounded Tristan, found him to be the slayer
of her betrothed, took his sword and was about to kill him, when he
opened his eyes, and the sword dropped from her listless fingers.
Brangaena is sufficiently astonished; Isolda works herself up into a
paroxysm of fury; and now the drama is indeed on foot. Brangaena has a
long, lovely, soothing passage to sing, and in her over-anxiety to serve
her mistress she accidentally suggests to Isolda the very means