Elisabet Strid & John Sunderland

Soprano Elisabet Strid and pianist John Sunderland present a recital centred on one of the most fascinating song cycles of the Romantic era: Richard Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder. Composed to five poems by Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of one of Wagner’s patrons in Zurich, these songs occupy a unique place in the composer’s output. Two of them, Im Treibhaus and Träume, were described by Wagner himself as “studies” for Tristan und Isolde, the opera that would forever revolutionise the language of Western music. Wagner’s relationship with Mathilde, marked by an intense emotional closeness, coincided with a period of political exile. After taking part in the Dresden uprisings of 1849, the composer was forced to leave Germany and settle in Switzerland. It was in this context of displacement, far from his homeland and immersed in a complex personal situation, that both the Wesendonck Lieder and the first ideas for Tristan took shape. Elisabet Strid, who sings Brünnhilde in the Royal Opera House’s new Ring cycle in London, makes her LIFE Victoria debut alongside pianist John Sunderland.