Zürich Opera House
Grand nineteenth-century theatre rebuilt after a fire, opened as Europe's first electrically lit opera house.
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About this audio guide
This guide to the Zurich Opera House asks what it costs a composer to write an opera he can never watch, and answers with Richard Wagner's flight into Swiss exile in eighteen forty-nine after joining an uprising in Dresden. It follows Wagner conducting his own music on this ground, then meeting Mathilde Wesendonck at one of those concerts in eighteen fifty-two, a married woman whose husband quietly paid off his debts and gave him a cottage he called his Asyl. You'll hear how that affection fed into the opera that became Tristan and Isolde, and how a letter meant for Mathilde changed everything in 1858. Stand where the old Aktientheater once stood and listen for the name Wagner gave his refuge.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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