racterize the early years of his philosophical and spiritual dissention and musical revolution. This sharp break from all conventional thought on religion/philosophy is a distinct feature of the lion phase, in which the overman fights with all his might to deny convention, and create freedom for oneself. (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Kaufman 139) The final creation of the lion phase must be his infamous opera masterpiece, Tristan und Isolde. .released in 1959, first performed in 1965, commonly thought of as the opera that brought music into the twentieth century. The reduction of resolution and stability and the increase in tension and confusion would bring the emotion to a level that the world had never seen, and would open the door to revolution in western harmony. Said about Schopenhauer, "He felt that, through their 'negation of the will', great mystics and creative artists, especially musicians, could perceive and express the most profound truths about the essence of being and becoming."( John 12 ) Wagner adapted these ideas verbatum and wrote a tragic love story that unified all his passions: the classic story, the super-emotion, and the intense demonstration of the dismal message that death is the only true salvation.This veritable cathartic experience was the culmination of his life's significant contributions to the progress of music and opera; in literature, it was the fruition of his philosophy, and a manifestation of his most personal fears and desires - the impossibility of true love, the idea of death as the sole path to love's fruition, true enlightenment, and liberation from the Desire that prevents a content and fulfilled existence (Schopenhauer). After the premiere of Tristan in 1866, one would think that there would soon after be an observable artistic shift of RW's music into the metaphorical child metamorphosis-the stage of complete self-actualization and the re-awakening of the spirit to zeal for life. It is instead, t...
