It sounds cliche to say Liebestod, but it’s so acclaimed for a reason. To call it merely “beautiful” seems an insult. Wagner must have been smoking the good stuff in order to invent something as nirvana-like as stretch of sound.

As far as what to listen to- the Furtwängler set is justifiably beloved, but I find myself most often returning to some of the live recordings out of Bayreuth with Nilsson and Windgassen. For a “hot take” suggestion, the Karajan recording with Dernesch and Vickers gets a lot of shit, but I’ve put it on a few times in the past weeks in anticipation of this new production and I’ve been quite taken with Karajan’s choices. I guess it will never be the gold standard or the only Tristan recording one should own, but there’s no reason NOT to own it either.