Richard Wagner is working on his new opera "Tristan and Isolde". Mathilde Wesendonck and her husband, the silk-merchant Otto Wesendonck venerate Wagner. Mathilde is turning from a loving mother into a muse of the new music.

An aged tailor recalls his life as the schoolteacher of a small village in Northern Germany that was struck by a series of strange events in the year leading up to WWI.