Anchorage Daily News

"MY LORDS, if you would hear a high tale of love and of death, here is that of Tristan and Queen Iseult."

Thus begins the ancient love story that sent crowds swooning in the Middle Ages. On Saturday, Anchorage will have a chance to experience it in a version similar to how troubadours of yore performed it when the Irish Club of Alaska and Turnagain Community Arts Alliance present Celtic harpist Patrick Ball and the Medieval Beasts in "The Flame of Love: The Legend of Tristan and Iseult."

The saga of an adulterous affair between an Irish princess and a Cornish warrior may spring from actual events of 2,000 years ago or more. The details have varied over the centuries, but the overall plot and archetypes have remained the same. Conquered Iseult is taken by Tristan, against her will, to become the bride of his king. She decides to poison herself and her captor but (perhaps) accidentally serves up a love potion instead. They tryst, are betrayed, then flee and fight. In the end, he dies from his wounds, she from love.

In around 1160, as the cult of romance flourished among Europe's elite, the story became a staple for minstrels like Thomas of Britain, who made his career in France despite his Anglo-Norman background. The 3,300 lines that survive of his poem "Tristan" give us a good feel for how the legend was probably presented in the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Yet it amounts only to about one-sixth of the original, which may have been performed over several evenings in the ancient bard tradition.

Accompanying himself on a stringed instrument, perhaps with an additional musician providing a drone or percussion obligato, Thomas would have spoken some narrative, interspersed songs relating to the action and likely mimed some of the details. As the light of crackling logs flickered on the stone vaults and smoke-darkened oak, his audience would have ached with compassion at the feelings they knew so well yet could seldom, if ever, express openly.

"They wandered in the depths of the wild wood, restless and in haste like beasts that are hunted, nor did they often dare to return by night to the shelter of yesterday. They ate but the flesh of wild animals. Their faces sank and grew white, their clothes ragged; for the briars tore them. They loved each other,+ and they did not know that they suffered."

Repression, marital and otherwise, may have contributed to "Tristan's" popularity. Thomas was but one of hundreds of performers who had some rendition of the tale in his repertoire in the medieval and Renaissance eras. The amusement of the nobles filtered into the songs of common folk.

As printing came in, the popular songs were turned into popular novels. In the 1800s, Richard Wagner trimmed the plot down to its bones, then stretched it into four and a half hours of music drama that some call the most important opera ever composed. The complex ramifications fed into the emergence of modern literature, psychology and analysis of mythology.

In 1900, a brilliant linguist, Joseph Bédier, returned to the fragments left by Thomas of Britain and other medieval poets to create a reconstruction in modern French. "Roman de Tristan et Iseult" -- a translation of which is used for the quotes in this article and on which Ball built his version -- was an instant classic and remains so on the basis of both scholarship and beauty.

"The summer passed, and the winter came: The two lovers lived, all hidden in the hollow of a rock, and on the frozen earth the cold crisped their couch with dead leaves. In the strength of their love neither one nor the other felt these mortal things."

Saturday's production will be staged "very simply," said Ball, making his fourth trip to Alaska, where he has previously presented solo performances. "We had a more elaborate set and lighting design when it ran for a couple of weeks at the Spreckels Performing Arts Center here in Sonoma County, Calif. But in Anchorage, and at most one-night touring engagements, it's essentially music/spoken word in a concert setting."

The players, which include accomplished ancient-instrument experts Shira Kammen and Tim Rayborn, in addition to Ball, will limn all the characters, from lovers to servants, wizards and lepers. They'll play a variety of things, from the Celtic harp and drum to the lute, vielle (a bowed lute) and psaltery (a zitherlike instrument).

And they'll perform period songs and instrumental music, both traditional folk music and formal, composed tunes. Some of these, like the chants of Hildegard of Bingen, date back to the time of Thomas himself.

The titles are in Latin, Italian, Breton, Old English, French and German, reflecting a time when -- for the class that could afford an evening of troubadour entertainment -- the world was a very cosmopolitan place.

When the arts, like love, knew no boundaries.

Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.

THE FLAME OF LOVE: THE LEGEND OF TRISTAN AND ISEULT will be performed by Patrick Ball and the Medieval Beasts at 7:30 p.m. Saturday in Our Lady of Guadalupe Church, 3900 Wisconsin Drive. Tickets cost $15-$25 at Celtic Treasures, 4240 Old Seward Highway; Suzi's Woollies, 420 G St.; or by calling 245-7311.

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