The figures of Tristan and Isolde depicted on this canvas were painted by Dalí in 1944 as a backdrop for the ballet Bacchanale, performed to Wagner's music and presented for the first time in 1944 on the stage of the International Theater in New York.
The tale of this ballet, for which Dalí wrote the libretto, began before the war. At that time that title was Mad Tristan. It was to be performed in Paris with the choreography by Leonide Massine, the scenery by Prince Charvachidze, and costumes on which Coco Chanel wished to use real ermine and genuine precious stones. The war prevented the production in Paris, and later the Marquis Georges de Cuevas decided to stage the spectacle in New York. "As with everything else," Dalí writes in The Secret Life, "my Mad Tristan, which was to have been my most successful theatrical venture, could not be given; so it became Venusberg and finally Bacchanale, which is the definitive version."
The two latest collaborations by Dalí in ballets date from 1961, when he participated with Maurice Bejart in the staging of The Spanish Lady and the Roman Cavalier by Scarlatti and a Ballet de Gala for which he wrote the libretto, designed the scenery and costumes, and demanded a curtain formed by motorcycles backfiring, hanging one from the other, and a real boeuf-ecorche-de-Rembrandt which was to have been replaced at each performance so as to exert over the spectators the paralyzing effect of its freshness.
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