In 2007, Barenboim and Chéreau worked together on a new production of Tristan and Isolde, the masterpiece of Wagner and modern opera. This book is the fruit of the conversations that the musical director and the stage director maintained during the editing, and thus offers the readers -not only the incorruptible music lovers- the possibility of witnessing an exceptional rite: the construction of the visual and sound spectacle of a masterpiece like Tristan and Isolde. Never two artists had shown so much enthusiasm to share with the public the creative process to mount the operatic show of a crucial piece for the development of modern music. A passionate two-voice meditation on the richness of opera, which helps us to understand the Wagnerian project of the "total work of art" in which to melt music, dance, poetry, painting, sculpture and architecture.