Bayreuth Festival 2007(2) Wagner, Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg : in a revival by Philippe Arlaud, sets by Philippe Arlaud, costumes by Carin Bartels, Soloists, the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra and chorus, conducted by Christoph Ulrich Meier. Bayreuth Festival, 18. 8.2007 (JPr)

 

Tannhäuser Act II Picture © Jochen Quast

This was the next Bayreuth performance after Die Meistersinger and many in this audience would have been at both. The storm of applause and the foot stamping that the singers, chorus and conductor received, not only seemed to an appreciation of their efforts but also a protest against what the audience had had to sit through a couple of nights earlier.

For me in hindsight,  I would have preferred to see these two operas the other way round. Tannhäuser would have been the perfect antidote had I found Die Meistersinger like the person sitting next to me ‘lamentable’. I did not. I was impressed by the honesty and bravery of that production (review), if left a little confused by some of the imagery and ideas. So it was that I was a bit spoilt by Katharina Wagner’s new staging where more happens in one minute than in the whole of Act I of Philippe Arlaud’s Tannhäuser lasting just short of one hour. While there is room for both approaches - this dichotomy is a fundamental part of where Bayreuth goes in the twenty-first century -  personally I am beginning to prefer too many ideas rather than none at all.

What we get with this Tannhäuser is virtually just a costumed concert. Over the years,  because of Workshop Bayreuth there may be a little more movement in it than when I first saw the production in   2002,  its first year, but it still remains rather too static and devoid of any interpretation.

Philippe Arlaud’s icy Venusberg looks like the open laptop on which I am writing this review. The audience has just spent about 20 minutes staring at the closed curtain and should really feel short-changed without the orgy that is sometimes choreographed,  even though we are hearing the original Dresden version. Here Tannhäuser is made to clasp Venus’s breast and they get into a clinch. Arlaud shows just three sirens in the background each revealing a shapely leg and that is about all there is to look at until Tannhäuser sings ‘Mein Heil liegt in Maria!’ and the set flies away  into the background in the magical manner that Bayreuth’s magnificent stage machinery allows.

Now in the Wartburg valley, we are in Tellytubby land or a vast grassy bower with ‘pasture’ covering floor, sides and ceiling, all studded with red poppies. The sweet voiced Shepherd (Robin Johannsen) freshly and plaintively sings ‘Frau Holda aus dem Berg hervor’. The song of the Pilgrims is heard in the distance and they enter on their way to Rome, stand around and sing, then leave down a subway tunnel under the front of the stage. The Landgraf’s hunting party enters like refugees from any routine staging of the ballet Giselle, complete with stuffed carcases. Everyone stands around again and sings until Frank van Aken (Tannhäuser) - who begins the Act singing loud and just gets louder and a touch coarser -  sings ‘Zu ihr, zu ihr!’ and sets off to find Elisabeth.

Although I have seen Tannhäuser several times, the debt it owes to Fidelio has never been so obvious.  Two examples suffice: listen to the Tannhäuser/Venus duet when he sings ‘Nach Freiheit, Freiheit dürste ich’ and to Tannhäuser/Elisabeth when they sing ‘Gepriesen sei die Stunde’ : there  is the music of Florestan and Leonore plain for all to hear.

Arlaud’s hall of the Minstrels in the Wartburg Hall is all gleaming gold, intense reds and black, colours that are later mirrored in the rigid costumes of the guests, with the knights distinguished by bits of armour. Again, there is not much contact between Tannhäuser and Elisabeth, although there is some hand-holding during the song contest which scandalises the guests present. These onlookers react with stylised movements throughout and when Walther sings, someone high up swoons and then he is showered with flowers. Of course, Tannhäuser's sins are soon revealed because not only has he enjoyed the erotic delights of being with the goddess Venus but he now feels the need to brag about this in the presence of his true love, lustily extolling the pleasure of being with Venus in front of the whole court. At this point Tannhäuser walks back and forth across the stage clutching bouquets of flowers but at least something is happening on stage. Only Elisabeth’s passionate intervention (‘Zurück von ihm!’) prevents the indignant knights of the Wartburg from killing Tannhäuser on the spot, but yet again everyone is standing still to hear her plea. Elisabeth has already begun to lose her mind and is giving up on life by this time but the Landgraf has the answer; send Tannhäuser to Rome, to beg Christian absolution for his pagan blasphemy. A great chorus rings out before Tannhäuser’s ‘Nach Rome!’

In Act III we were back invading the territory of the Tellytubbies but a yellowish light gives it all a more desolate appearance: later there is a blue light to guide Elisabeth’s soul heavenwards. For me all the emoting, standing around and singing was rather soulless. The Pilgrims enter, stand, sing, then leave. Tannhäuser has not found absolution and comes back from Rome crushed and in the deepest despair. He throws himself around the stage during his Narration explaining how if only the Pope’s wooden staff should bloom again will he be pardoned for his epic sins. This is of course what happens but it will be too late for him and Elisabeth. Venus reappears and is about to reclaim her victim when Wolfram evokes Elisabeth’s name and Tannhäuser is freed from Venus's clutches at last. His final exhausted ‘Heilige Elisabeth, bitte für mich!’ is actually quite affecting. Eventually all is green again as the Pope’s staff with its new  shoots is shown and everything reaches its redemptive conclusion:  one soul is saved by the death of the blameless woman (Das Ewig Weibliche).

Judit Nemeth’s Venus was surprisingly passionate, compelling and seductive considering she was restricted mostly to   semaphore-like gestures. She and Ricarda Merbeth’s Elisabeth produced big, loud tones athough Merbeth’s ‘Dich, teure Halle’ lacked the certain finesse I was always told to listen out for when auditioning young artists.  Happily, sShe scaled down her voice  for an affecting ‘Allmächt’ge Jungfrau’ that was as lovely and prayerful as it should be. Roman Trekel’s Wolfram von Eschenbach was magisterial, an honourable  yet strangely introspective man who sang ‘O du, mein holder Abendstern’ as though it was from a book of Lieder: this was nuanced and full of detail, qualities which characterised his singing throughout the whole evening. Guido Jentjens also shaped each of his lines with profound insight and great warmth but his diction seemed poor. The principals were supported by some stout singing from the minor minstrels and the always excellent chorus,   confined as they were to being groups of pilgrims or filling the balconies of the Wartburg Hall.

Absolved of any doubt or criticism was Christoph Ulrich Meier, a late replacement for Fabio Luisi as conductor. (Maestro Luisi apparently had an ‘acute back ailment’ although this does not seemed to have stopped him conducting before the festival or having plans for early September).  Meier was once assistant to and protégé of Christian Thielemann and his intense reading transparently revealed facets of the work  rarely heard with such clarity and intensity. The orchestra’s playing began on a high with a Prelude which reached an orgasmic climax and from that point onwards it continued to play with  pure Bayreuth magic.

Another last minute replacement was the Dutch tenor, Frank van Aken, as Tannhäuser who had come  in during June to replace Wolfgang Millgram. Though this character is perhaps the most passionate, revolutionary and morally-challenged in all of opera, van Aken sang him as an out-and-out hero with little doubt, internalisation or apparent identification with the role. Perhaps the director did not have enough time to help him? If he had been auditioning for Tristan then he did a good job but his voice though powerful to the end,  has a worryingly unschooled  quality about it which makes me doubt that  he will extend his varied career of lyric and lighter heroic roles  much if he sings too much heavy Wagner.

For those who booed Katharina Wagner’s Die Meistersinger or were perhaps on the Green Hill for the first time this production was a glimpse of Bayreuth of yesteryear. An abstract production with admittedly exciting ‘stand and deliver’ singing but as we go towards the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth is this all we (or he ) would really want, I wonder? We should be prepared to have our intellects engaged and not be willing to watch a production that could have, with a bit of tweaking, been used not just for Tannhäuser, but for Lohengrin,  Tristan und Isolde (just) and  Parsifal. There are complex conflicts here that Philippe Arlaud did little to explore and, I repeat, it is better ( in my opinion) to have too many ideas in a production  than none at all.

Jim Pritchard

 

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