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Visiting Zurich earlier this week, I was eager to sample the Zurich Opera in Wagner. They are bringing the Ring<\/em> to Carnegie Hall next season led by their General Music Director, Gianandrea Noseda. I found myself attending the premiere of a new Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> production. The conductor is not Noseda, but Tugan Sokhiev. The director is Thorleifur Orn Arnarsson. Would that Sokhiev and Arnarsson were conducting and directing the forthcoming Met Ring<\/em>, rather than Yannick Nezet-Seguin and Yuval Sharon. The Zurich Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> is better than the Met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Compared to Donald Runnicles\u2019 Met\u00a0Tannh\u00e4user\u00a0<\/em>of 2023, compared to Nezet-Seguin\u2019s meandering\u00a0Parsifal<\/em>\u00a0and bland\u00a0Tristan<\/em>, Sokhiev is more dynamic, more purposeful. Like Noseda, he once worked under Valery Gergiev in St. Petersburg. He is about to take over the Orchestre de la Ruisse Romande. The Zurich Opera orchestra proved exceptionally alert, engaged musically, engaged operatically.\u00a0\u00a0Not as perfect as the Met Orchestra, but a better orchestra. The chorus is excellent.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arnarsson, who is Icelandic, enjoys a distinguished career as a theater director. He brings to Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> a wicked intelligence kindred to Wagner\u2019s own (but not in this particular opera). For the Entrance of the Guests in act two, every guest is individually caricatured \u2013 a ditzy spectacle that transpires while the Langdraf is silently rehearsing his windy speech to come. Because Tannh\u00e4user is a man wholly apart \u2013 estranged from the world, estranged from himself \u2013 Arnarsson\u2019s Wartburg is no less dissolute than the Venusberg. Here and elsewhere, the production delights and startles the eye without wasting a fortune on special effects. In fact, there\u2019s no expensive gimmickry whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The star of the show is not Tannh\u00e4user or Elisabeth but Wolfram. He is the baritone Christian Gerhaher, chiefly known as a singer of Lieder, cast against type. His Wolfram (photographed above among the act two Guests) brandishes no creamy legato. At times, the delivery more resembles a parlando recitative at the softest possible dynamic. At the Met in 2023, this impersonation was merely anomalous. In Zurich \u2013 a tiny but richly decorated house with 1,100 seats \u2013 it complements Arnarsson\u2019s meddlesome dramaturgy. Wolfram enters recklessly driving a car (never mind why), a creature of cunning intelligence. His deep affection for Elisabeth comes as a surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wagner begins the final (and best) act of Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> with Wolfram sympathetically observing Elisabeth in prayer. Gerhaher steps to the lip of the stage and addresses the audience directly \u2013 a Shakespearean move. From that point on, we are led to experience the drama through Wolfram\u2019s eyes and ears. Wagner\u2019s Wolfram is a bit of a milquetoast (this is early Wagner); though he laments Elisabeth\u2019s death, he greets Tannh\u00e4user \u2013 his rival — with utterly self-effacing compassion. When Gerhaher\u2019s feckless Wolfram tells Tannh\u00e4user he\u2019s seized with empathy, he is obviously dissimulating. Tannh\u00e4user\u2019s ensuing Rome Narrative, the opera\u2019s compositional high point, is an anguished plea for understanding. Wolfram first stands apart, then gradually succumbs. Gerhaher\u2019s gripping deportment partners Tannh\u00e4user\u2019s soliloquy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Zurich Tannh\u00e4user is an American, Eric Cutler. If he lacks the clarion heft this role requires, his hymn to Venus, in act one, artfully conveys an undercurrent of ennui. His handling of the act three narrative is more than artful \u2013 the pacing, both musical and dramatic, the verbal and expressive detail are magnificently rendered. Tannh\u00e4user\u2019s desperation and Wolfram\u2019s transformation are made equally credible. I was startled to read in the program book that he is singing the role for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The opera\u2019s third principal is Christina Nilsson, miscast as Aida at the Met a year ago. She holds her own. Like Gerhaher\u2019s, like Cutler\u2019s, hers is not a big voice. Perhaps all this is today what Wagner can best become. The epic performers (listen to Tannh\u00e4user<\/em> with Lauritz Melchior or Lotte Lehmann or Lawrence Tibbett) are a thing of the past. (Personally, I don\u2019t experience Lise Davidsen as another Birgit Nilsson or \u2013 to cite an Elisabeth of electrifying nervous instability, kindred to the Dutchman\u2019s Senta or Lohengrin\u2019s Elsa \u2013 Leonie Rysanek.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n OK, important things are lost in the Zurich Tannh\u00e4user<\/em>. Arnarsson is no Frank Castorf, eagerly deconstructing the composer\u2019s intentions. But not every aspect of his re-interpretation tells, at least by my reckoning. I find he underplays Elisabeth\u2019s intensity by stressing her imposed conformity (she begins and ends the show as a statue that Tannh\u00e4user must ultimately smash). The act one transformation scene, so magically realized by Wagner when the sulfurous Venusberg dissipates to yield a fragrant mountain valley, is in no way attempted. When Albert Niemann, the first Tannh\u00e4user, insisted on cutting a part of the second act finale \u2013 the outburst \u201cErbarm dich mein, der, ach! so tief in S\u00fcnden\u201d\u2013 in order to conserve his voice, Wagner was apoplectic. \u201cSing the second act finale as if you were to end the evening with it!\u201d It is a Tristan moment of superhuman intensity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Are superhuman Wagner tenors wholly a thing of the past? Maybe. We live in a different world today. <\/p>\n\n\n\n