Contrast: an opera by Wagner and its lessons for a full life
Yesterday I had the privilege of seeing Wagner’s work Tristan and Iseult at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. It was a 5-hour endeavor (began at 7 PM and lasted until just after midnight) that took me to places of wonder, feelings of beauty, and in touch with the true reality of human existence.
Now, if you’re not familiar with opera, you might be wondering what the heck I’m talking about. I know! Although opera singers were once as fashionable as Britney Spears is today, the genre has lost its popular appeal. I guess most people today would cringe at the thought of going to the opera. However, it certainly didn’t feel like that yesterday. Despite the fact that we were in one of the largest opera houses in the world, the tickets for the performance were completely sold out. Even after sitting in those chairs for almost the same amount of time the average American spends sleeping every night, we all stayed an extra 15 minutes to give a standing ovation to all the singers and musicians. We couldn’t get enough!
if you have never seen Tristan, I say: this is certainly worth a Saturday afternoon and a Netflix rental. If you have an opera house nearby, buy a ticket and enjoy. But when you “take the plunge,” make sure you don’t spend time just listening to the music and noticing the funny faces of the singer. Instead, I encourage you to dive in a little deeper. This work is called a masterpiece for a reason. If you listen closely, don’t be surprised, you might find yourself moved and shaken by a crude representation of humanity.
Wagner’s opera is all about contrast. As the story unfolds, it brings us closer to our own real contradictions: day and night, light and dark, masculine and feminine, friendship and betrayal, love and death. Even the set for yesterday’s performance was half black, half white. And as I traveled through this story, I couldn’t help but think about the importance of this contrast in our lives. What would life be like without its ups and downs?
If you think about it, how would you know and value happiness if you didn’t feel sadness? How would you have the pleasure of breathing a sigh of relief if you had not felt the pain? How would we aspire to heaven if we did not recognize the little piece of hell that exists in our own history?
Today, we tend to blindly yearn for goodness and reject any hint of pain and sadness. In an age where there is a pill for every pain and where comfort must be achieved at all costs, we are pushed into the false assumption that a full life is bound to experience happy feelings all the time. The simple suggestion of a melancholic feeling becomes a trigger for despair, dissatisfaction and concern.
A full life is a complete life. And life is everything. Feelings of unhappiness, heartache, and pain are unavoidable. they will happen We will all experience them in one way or another. And if we continue to deny them and so enthusiastically refuse to accept them as fact, the more painful they will become.
It is not that we should simply give up when the bread arrives. This is also no way to live. The secret is balance and humility to understand that not all moments will be perfect, not all situations will be pleasant.
Mr. Scott Peck begins his best-selling book the road less traveled with the phrase “life is hard.” He goes on to say that only when we accept this idea and stop fighting it can we understand wholeness and joy.
As you can imagine, in the opera, both Tristan and Isolde could never accept the contrast of life, of course. This is a romantic opera. What else would you expect? Instead, they end up choosing death in the hope that it will give them eternal peace and love. What they didn’t know was that relief was imminent. Their nemesis, King Marke, was coming up close to pardon and unite them. Life had been a struggle for them, but peace was just around the corner. I hope you will remember this the next time a complaint is filed.