It is characteristic of Wagner’s operas, in their remarkable urgency and depth, that initially one thinks they are dealing with one or another opposition, for instance, Power versus Love in the Ring, only to find, as one gets further into them, that they are very much more complicated than that, and often that what seems to be their subject matter is not what actually is.
It is characteristic of Wagner’s operas, in their remarkable urgency and depth, that initially one thinks they are dealing with one or another opposition, for instance, Power versus Love in the Ring, only to find, as one gets further into them, that they are very much more complicated than that, and often that what seems to be their subject matter is not what actually is. Probably Wagner was as surprised as we are by what he found himself to be fundamentally concerned with – plenty of passages in his letters and in Cosima’s diaries suggest that he was.
But the one work of his which refuses to be more complicated than it originally appears to be is Tannhäuser, where the initial opposition between sensual and spiritual love remains just that, and the eponymous hero, or anti-hero, spends the opera torn between the two. Yet, of course, Wagner knew that life and love are not as simple as that, and indeed many of his other operas are at least partly devoted to showing how shallow the contrast between the flesh and the spirit, as made in much traditional religion and philosophy, is.
What is more bewildering, and makes Tannhäuser more interesting than it might appear, is that one character in it, Elisabeth, realises, not wholly to her delight, that love isn’t a straightforward matter, and finds herself, movingly, struggling with thoughts and feelings which she didn’t realise she could have — thoughts and feelings which are the effect on her of meeting Tannhäuser and hearing him sing, for the opera is partly about the effect that singing can have on people, and what impels them to song.
How much of this — which is not only basic to understanding Tannhäuser, its glories as well as its puzzling weaknesses, but is also crucial to understanding its relationship to Wagner’s other works — comes across in the new production of the work at the Royal Opera by Tim Albery? Nothing whatever. But then nothing else is conveyed by it either; it is, in its blank inanity, as unsearching a production of an opera as anything I have seen.
Set, fashionably, in some war zone presumably in Central Europe, apart from the Venusberg, which is the Royal Opera (I wish), and with characters in the standard shabby greatcoats, apart from the song contest, when they don shabby dinner jackets, it directs our attention away from anything that Tannhäuser could conceivably be said to be concerned with, and into the void. I realise that directors and their fans think it chic to have the maximum possible contrast between the music we are listening to and anything we see on stage, not to mention any discrepancies between the text and the action, but the limits of possibility are surely reached when there is no interaction at all between the two.
What is worse is that a production as vapid as this does clearly have an impact on the quality of the musical performance. When characters hardly interact, apart from the odd perfunctory embrace, it isn’t surprising that the singers, however gifted they may be, are reduced to being nothing but singers, and that this affects the way they sing. The cast of this first run happens to be a very strong one, yet almost none of them gives as much as they are capably of, because they are not having serious dramatic demands made of them.
Johan Botha, the ranking Tannhäuser at present, has a powerful voice and a sympathetic personality. Yet he makes less of the role than he did of the probably less interesting part of Lohengrin last year, because he is not given an intelligible context. Wandering around among old-style rocks and ruins, and the odd upturned dining-room chair, how could he be expected to inhabit a character? Eva-Maria Westbroek is more satisfactory, partly because the role of Elisabeth is so much stronger, partly because she looks so convincing; though it is worrying to hear a voice which only a couple of years ago sounded so fresh now showing signs of wear.
Michaela Schuster is ill-suited to Venus, having a voice with a hard edge, and also a ridiculous setting to contend with. The most satisfactory performance is certainly that of Christian Gerhaher as Wolfram. He sings the role as magically as anyone ever has, and its dramatic demands are so limited that it is possible to fulfil them even in this mise-en-scène. Yet he made me long to see him in a quite different production, where the work is taken with at least minimal seriousness.
The conducting of Semyon Bychkov is always striking, and the orchestra played for him with an intensity of tone which earned its ovation. Yet he made heavy weather of many stretches of the score, including the opening few minutes; and crucially the great ensemble in Act II, the score’s most magnificent passage, fell apart as it so easily does, so that its clinching bars failed of their purpose. I shall listen to the broadcast — the BBC has decided that it is the appropriate opera for Christmas evening — to see what impression it makes when there are no distracting idiot visuals.
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