
There are many wonderful recordings of the Liebestod from Wagner's TRISTAN UND ISOLDE. Leontyne Price, in a recording conducted by Henry Lewis, gives the aria a sense of lyrical grandeur.
Leontyne Price - Liebestod ~ TRISTAN UND ISOLDE
"How softly and gently he smiles, how sweetly his eyes open - can you see, my friends... do you not see it? How he glows ever brighter, raising himself high among the stars? Do you not see it?
How his heart swells with courage, gushing, full and majestic, in his breast? How in tender bliss the sweet breath gently wafts from his lips - Friends! Look! Do you not feel and see it?
Do I alone hear this melody so wondrously and gently sounding from within him?
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In bliss lamenting, all-expressing, gently reconciling... piercing me, soaring aloft, its sweet echoes resounding about me?
Are they gentle aerial waves ringing out clearly, surging around me? Are they billows of blissful fragrance? As they seethe and roar about me, shall I breathe, shall I give ear?
Shall I drink of them, plunge beneath them? Breathe my life away in sweet scents? In the heaving swell, in the resounding echoes, in the universal stream of the world-breath...- to drown - sink down - unconscious - highest bliss!"
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