WEDNESDAY 9 JULY 2026

TRISTAN UND ISOLDE –  WHOSE LOVE STORY?

TALK BY CHRISTOPHER COOK – VIA ZOOM

At 7.00pm [AEST]
on Wednesday 9 July 2026
via zoom

Tristan und Isolde –  Whose Love Story?
a talk by Christopher Cook

$12 AUD

REGISTRATION DETAILS
TO BE PROVIDED

When you register for this online talk, 
you will receive the zoom link 
in the Message from the host 
in your confirmation email. 

For those who are unable to participate in the LIVE talk, 
we will be recording the talk,
and will forward the link later
to all those who have registered, 
to view the talk at their convenience.

ABOUT CHRISTOPHER COOK

Christopher Cook is a cultural historian who began his career in television, producing for BBC-2 and Channel 4. He has broadcast regularly about the arts and cultural politics on BBC Radios 2, 3, 4, and 5. He is a regular contributor to BBC Music Magazine, has contributed to International Record Review and written programme notes for the Barbican, the BBC Proms and ENO programmes. 

Christopher teaches for the University of Syracuse and the University of Oregon on their London Programme and was co-Dean the British American Drama Academy.  He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts, London; and an Honorary Research Fellow in the Drama Department at Birkbeck College and at Queen Mary University.

Christopher has chaired pre-concert events for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, the Hallé Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Study Evenings at the Royal Opera House and at Glyndebourne. He has also interviewed for the Wagner Society in London. From 2010 he curated English National Opera’s pre-performance talks. Christopher was the Director of the Cheltenham Festival of Literature in 2004, Chair of the Cheltenham International Music Festival for seven years and was Chair of Deal Music and Arts in East Kent until 2023.

Christopher has previously spoken via zoom to the Wagner Society in NSW – on Wagner and Britain in 2024 and on Amfortas! Die Wunde … Two Wounded Disciples in 2022.

ABOUT THE TALK

As all good Wagnerians know when the composer was contemplating a work on the legend of Tristan and Isolde, he was also embarking on a romantic relationship with the wife of his then patron, the wealthy silk merchant Otto Wesendonck. Indeed Otto rented a small cottage on his estate outside Zurich to Wagner and his wife Minna. In time the relationship between the composer and Mathilde Wesendonck came to grief. But the affair begs a question about the artist quite as much as the man; did Wagner need the relationship with Mathilde in order to write Tristan? Was art imitating life? In this talk I will explore the history of the four principal characters, Otto and Mathilde Wesendonck and Richard and Minna Wagner, often in their own words, in parallel to the music dramas that Wagner is himself writing from Rheingold to Tristan.