{"id":2831,"date":"2023-12-15T00:38:08","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T05:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2831"},"modified":"2024-08-19T00:48:35","modified_gmt":"2024-08-19T04:48:35","slug":"a-timely-old-tannhauser-at-the-met","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2023\/12\/a-timely-old-tannhauser-at-the-met.html","title":{"rendered":"A Timely Old \u201cTannh\u00e4user\u201d at the Met"},"content":{"rendered":"
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“Tannhauser,” act two, at the Metropolitan Opera<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The Met\u2019s current revival of Otto Schenk\u2019s 1977 production of Wagner\u2019s Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> is an event unthinkable in any European house \u2013 perhaps unthinkable in any other American house. Designed by Gunther Schneider-Siemssen, this was a rare attempt to faithfully render Wagner\u2019s complex scenic intentions, albeit with access to instruments of stagecraft unavailable in Wagner\u2019s time. The result was an unimpeachably Romantic staging of a Romantic grand opera \u2013 with no questions asked about hidden agendas or old-fashioned thinking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I well remember Andrew Porter\u2019s ecstatic New Yorker<\/em> review, which hailed a triumphant antidote to revisionist Regietheater. \u201cA twentieth century landmark in the history of Wagner staging,\u201d he called it. \u201cAs far as I know, it represents the first attempt any major company has made in more than a quarter of a century . . . to do a Wagner opera in the way Wagner asked for it to be done.\u201d Porter urged the Met to undertake a Schenk\/Schneider-Siemssen Ring<\/em>. And the Met did precisely that \u2013 with disappointing results. The Ring<\/em> is a music drama exploring archetypes, not a Romantic opera invoking thirteenth-century German history. But the Schenk Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> worked its magic. And it proves just as presentable — and arguably more necessary —  in 2023.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many points of conjunction between what the ear hears and the eye sees are unforgettably clinched. The action begins with the erotic Venusberg. Wagner asks for \u201ca wide grotto which, as it curves towards the right in the background, seems to be prolonged till the eye loses it in the distance. From an opening in the rocks, through which the daylight filters dimly, a greenish waterfall plunges down the whole height of the grotto, foaming wildly over the rocks; out of the basin that receives the water a brook flows to the further background; it there forms into a lake, in which Naiads are seen bathing, while Sirens recline on its banks.\u201d Schneider-Siemssen wisely doesn\u2019t attempt all of this \u2013 but he poetically renders enough of it to get the job done. At the climax of the Venusberg orgy, Wagner makes everything suddenly and cataclysmically vanish, to be replaced by \u201ca green valley. . . blue sky, bright sun. In the foreground is a shrine to the Virgin. A Shepherd Boy is blowing his pipe and singing.\u201d A credulous rendering of this transformation, abetted by Wagner\u2019s musical imagination, proves as breathtaking today as half a century ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the opera\u2019s close, Tannh\u00e4user expires alongside Elisabeth\u2019s bier, and young pilgrims arrive with a flowered staff betokening his foregiveness. Nowadays, this ending is variously revised. It is considered toxic or tired. But faithfully conjoined with the reprise of the Pilgrims\u2019 Chorus, it remains overwhelming. I attended Tuesday night\u2019s performance with a devout Christian who objects that Wagner presents Tannh\u00e4user\u2019s redemption as a reward for repentance (“Christ died for our sins”). Another companion, at the same performance, objects that the opera’s discourse on duty and honor seems terribly Germanic in a musty way. Alternatively, Tannh\u00e4user <\/em>can be read and re-read as an argument against self-indulgence. I discover, for myself, that none of this really matters. I now mainly discover in Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> an emotional purgative or therapy \u2013 it powerfully exercises feelings of compassion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The arts are today vanishing from the American experience. There is a crisis in cultural memory. How best keep Tannh\u00e4user <\/em>alive? Flooded with neophytes, the Metropolitan Opera audience is very different from audiences just a few decades ago. What I observed at the end of Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> was an ambushed audience thrilled and surprised. The Met is cultivating newcomers with new operas that aren\u2019t very good. A more momentous longterm strategy, it seems to me, would be to present great operas staged in a manner that reinforces \u2013 rather than challenges or critiques or refreshes \u2013 the intended marriage of words and music. For newcomers to Wagner, an updated Tannh\u00e4user <\/em>would almost certainly possess less \u201crelevance\u201d than Schenk\u2019s 46-year-old staging \u2013 if relevance is to be measured in terms of sheer visceral impact. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

About Tuesday\u2019s performance: Reviving the Schenk Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> would be pointless without the forces to do Wagner some degree of justice. And standard repertoire at the Met, these days, is never a sure thing. The current cast offers nothing remotely comparable to Leonie Rysanek\u2019s Elisabeth or James McCracken\u2019s Tannh\u00e4user of 1977 \u2013 to say nothing of such legendary Met Wagnerites as Lotte Lehmann and Lauritz Melchior. The first 45 minutes are a loss. The Venusberg ballet seems interminable. I could not detect a single word sung by Venus. Later on, the Wolfram is at best an acquired taste: Christian Gerhaher talks his way through the part. But the Met\u2019s current Tannh\u00e4user and Elisabeth \u2013 Andreas Schager and Elza van den Heever \u2013 rise sufficiently to the occasion. Neither is vocally resplendent \u2013 but both singing and acting are honest and informed, audible and visible. The conductor, Donald Runnicles, capably steers the big climaxes.  The chorus is terrific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is by now apparent that the current Met orchestra suffers from an odd defect: the violins are at all times overbalanced. Regardless of venue or seat location, they register with insufficient volume and energy. (I am by no means alone in this opinion.) Perpetuating cultural memory is a challenge for everyone \u2013 onstage, in the pit, in the house. I discern scant evidence that these youngish string players love the operas they perform. The Venusberg music, in particular, is a faded cartoon unless purveyed with sustained intensity. Just listen<\/a><\/strong> to Artur Bodanzky\u2019s torrid Met orchestra of 1936 and you\u2019ll hear what I am talking about: a harrowing vortex of feeling. In the pit, the Schwung and bite of the low strings, animating the Landgraf\u2019s arid speeches, the urgency and precision of the reckless violin riffs, are feats no longer associated with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this 1936 Tannh\u00e4user <\/em>broadcast is Melchior\u2019s show. If in his lifetime he was somewhat taken for granted, it was partly because his consistency of achievement (at least until Bodanzky died) was absolute. On this occasion, every encounter with Lawrence Tibbett\u2019s Wolfram strikes sparks. The third act\u2019s Mitleid moment \u2013 where Wolfram\u2019s unexpected compassion ignites Tannh\u00e4user\u2019s tortured confessional narrative \u2013 is so believable that the incredulity of Tannh\u00e4user\u2019s gratitude seems wholly unrehearsed. Porter, in his New Yorker<\/em> review, discovered authenticity in the Met\u2019s Tannh\u00e4user <\/em>of 1977. But it is Melchior, in 1936, who realizes the Olympian expectations Wagner specified: that in act two Tannh\u00e4user\u2019s  <\/em>“Erbarm dich mein\u201d must become the drama\u2019s titanic linchpin; that in act three Tannh\u00e4user must exude a terminal weariness both physical and existential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not so long ago, the 1936 Bodanzky Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> was only accessible to opera fanatics on rare LPs. These days, it\u2019s an under-utilized tap on youtube<\/a><\/strong>. As a prized morsel of cultural memory, it remains indispensable. But an 87-year-old broadcast recording in faded sound, sans scenery and stage activity, can only retain pertinence if we possess the means — and also the mindset — to recreate a vital re-embodiment in our vexed twenty-first century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Follow-up blogs:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“Tannh\u00e4user”\u00a0— Take Two<\/a><\/blockquote>