Tristan und Curly  Page 2

   In the original opera, a great hero called Tristan falls in love with an Irish princess called Isolde whom he's supposed to be escorting to her wedding to the King.
   Feeling ashamed of their illicit affair, Tristan and Isolde decide to drink a yucky Death Potion medicine, but Isolde's maid switches the medications around (this would never happen at the Best Friends clinic), and they end up drinking a Love Potion instead.

This is the famous painting of Tristan and Isolde by Ferdinand Leeke (1859-1925). I'm sorry if it takes a long time to download, but it's still shorter than the opera itself.

   Everything proceeds to get very complicated. There's a 45-minute love duet, after which Tristan is mortally wounded in a duel with a jealous rival and is rushed away to wait for Isolde to come with a new potion which he hopes will really euthanize him this time since the pain of being wounded by love is greater than he can bear.
   At the end, there's a big fight ("tsk tsk" say the dogs at Dogtown), and when the curtain falls after Isolde's last big song, pretty much everyone in the opera has gone over the Rainbow Bridge.

Next Page: My own version: Tristan at Best Friends.