This is just about perfect. "The Mythic Mysteries" is one of five WNYC Radio tributes, explanations and justifications for Richard Wagner's opera, Tristan and Isolde.

Sometimes, rarely, once in a long while, the talk about the music is on the same level as the music itself -- and I'm aware of the potential absurdity of such a statement, considering the music at hand. But, once in a while it happens.

Here in 16-plus minutes "The Mythic Mysteries" investigates, and resolves, the matters of love and longing; unrequited love where hope still remains; adultery; pain before death, pain after death and then letting go after death.

Pow. Deep, deep deep -- but always welcoming and a pleasure to hear, process, and then hear again. "The Mythic Mysteries" offers strong writing, well placed irony and Amy O'Leary's narrative tone and inflections are equally heroic elements.

At 16:32, "The Mythic Mysteries" is tricky to schedule. Consider combining the five parts of WNYC's Tristan Mysteries to create an hour of entertaining and engaging radio -- that just happens to be about opera.

No operatic experience or operatic attachment required for your listeners, and worth consideration for most formats, including news-information. Saturdays on non-MET stations or Friday night after ATC or Marketplace. Classical: suitable for Saturday before the MET; Saturday after the MET.

The MET offers Wagner's Tristan and Isolde on its regular Saturday matinee radio broadcast on Saturday, December 6 at 11 a.m. EST.

Additional Tristan Mysteries Series Segments:

The Sexual Mysteries (14:08): Content advisory aside, this segment is both historically and hysterically revealing and reveling.

The Visual Mysteries (15:54): Director Peter Sellers explains how it's acceptable, understandable and maybe desirable to never quite figure it all out note by note.

The Sonic Mysteries (15:34): College Music Theory courses rarely made such a relevant and contemporary case for this most famous chord of all time.

The Five-Hour Mysteries (16:37): Makes a strong, comforting case that falling asleep during the opera is fine. It only seems like nothing is happening over the opera's 5 hours, but "something is happening all the time." Then there's the sex on the beach at the end. (Content advisory at about 7 minutes in.)