A Singer’s Life – Let’s celebrate ‘Tannhäuser’
As we approach the concert performance of Wagner’s opera, ‘Tannhäuser’, at the Edinburgh International Festival on 25th August, I thought I would have a look at this important milestone in the career of one of the greatest of all composers.
Sir Donald Runnicles, no stranger to the EMR, having featured in an interview I conducted with him a couple of years ago, is bringing his whole ensemble from the Deutsche Oper, Berlin to the Festival for a one-off performance of this famously long and tricky opera. Donald and I were at school together at George Watson’s College fifty years ago (surely not?), and although I have retired from the opera scene, Donald is still going strong, as the General Music Director of the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. In fact, the only time we ever performed together was also in ‘Tannhäuser’, at the BBC Proms in 2013, when Donald was also Chief Conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. I was very excited to be singing with my old friend and started working on my role of Reinmar von Zweter. The character was a historical figure, a 13th Century poet, and I found his music throughout the opera. Unfortunately, although he appears in several huge ensembles, he has no solo lines outwith the ensembles, so my voice was never heard. Was this a subliminal message? Who knows?
The performance on the 25th will be the first time the opera has been played at the Edinburgh Festival, and being a concert version, we need not worry about what some director may have imagined as his/her concept. This tale of love in mediaeval times about the courtly Minnesinger Tannhäuser, pitching his sensual erotic love for the goddess Venus against the chaste, pure and redemptive love of the Princess Elisabeth, niece of the Landgrave of Thuringia, Hermann, is the second great opera written by Richard Wagner to establish his fame. First performed in Dresden in 1845, it was revised and changed dramatically for its premiere in Paris in 1861, and then revised again for performance in Vienna in 1875. We haven’t been informed which version Donald will be conducting, but in 2013, he used the Paris one, although adding in bits from Dresden.
Briefly (well, quite briefly – this is Wagner!), the story is thus: after a majestic overture, featuring the Pilgrims’ chorus from Act 3, we find ourselves inside the mountain known as the Venusberg in Thuringia, near the castle of the Wartburg. Heinrich von Ofterdingen, known as Tannhäuser, was one of a group of courtly troubadours whose sole existence seems to have been to compose and sing love songs in the Wartburg, sort of Mediaeval German George Michaels, annually competing in a competition (like Eurovision). He left the Wartburg under a cloud and has sought solace in the pagan court of Venus, where he has lived for over a year, wallowing in sensuality and surrounded by gorgeous women. Astonishingly, he has become weary of perpetual love-making (oh, the stress!), and begs to be released. Venus naturally would prefer him to stay, and forbids his return to the Wartburg, but in an increasingly ecstatic song (with harp), he finally says the magic words ‘My salvation rests with the virgin Mary’, and the whole edifice vanishes in smoke, leaving Tannhäuser lost and bewildered in the valley. The Minnesingers are out hunting and when they come across their old colleague, whom they believed to be simply lost and elsewhere in Germany, they are delighted and bring him back to the castle.
The Wartburg is actually still there in what was East Germany. I visited when I was singing in the Halle Handel Festival in the early 1990s and found a well-restored and rather magical castle on top of a hill, where you could really imagine the events of the second act taking place in the 13th century.
The act opens with Elisabeth greeting the noble contest hall (‘Dich, teure Halle’) in an ecstatic aria, remembering her love for Tannhäuser, who, conveniently, is brought in at that minute by Wolfram von Eschenbach, his dearest friend, who has discovered him in the valley. Wolfram was a real historical character, and indeed his most famous work, ‘Parzival’, the celebrated Arthurian romance, was the catalyst for Wagner’s operas ‘Lohengrin’ and ‘Parsifal’. Wolfram also holds a candle for Elisabeth but realises that a mere baritone doesn’t cut it up against a Wagnerian tenor, so he stands back as Tannhäuser drops to his knees, begging forgiveness for being away. He doesn’t quite mention where he has been, mind you. After much happy singing, the two men depart to change and eat freshly slaughtered venison.
The Landgrave (bass) enters, embracing his niece, and announcing that she will preside over the forthcoming singing competition, the Sängerkrieg (literally the war of the singers – a bad omen perhaps?). It’s much less male chauvinist than the Meistersinger story, where the father figure announces that his daughter shall be the prize. Here, Elisabeth can grant the winner his wish (presumably not her!).
The locals gather for the competition and Hermann declares the theme of the improvised songs to be: ‘Can you explain the nature of Love?’ We have to remember that all the participants are troubadours and spend their whole lives singing of Courtly Love, the mediaeval tradition of formal and stylised love. It’s a bit like all those 1950s musicals, with Doris Day, where love never reaches the bedroom (Heaven forfend!), and a lot of hot air is expended on the idea rather than the practice.
Wolfram kicks off the contest with a lovely baritone paean to courtly love, but Tannhäuser can’t stop himself from asking for a bit more passion. Another bass, the grumpy Biterolf, who obviously has a lot to learn but never will, leaps to Wolfram’s defence, accuses Tannhäuser of blasphemy and drones on about women’s virtue and honour, like some sort of Calvinist preacher. Tempers fray and swords are drawn, but Hermann calms things down with a few words. Tannhäuser, being a tenor, has to have the last word, and launches into a passionate defence of sensual love, and other naughty stuff, revealing where he has been for the last year. This, understandably, doesn’t go down well with the assembled prudes and courtly lovers, and all Hell breaks loose, as it were. All the women flee, screaming, and the men round on our ‘hero’, condemning him to death. Only Elisabeth, pure though she is, offers him support, saying that even the worst villain can be saved and asking for mercy. Hermann calms everyone down (again - another bass thing), and Tannhäuser is exiled and sent to Rome with some pilgrims to ask for mercy from the Pope.
Act 3 begins with an introduction depicting Tannhäuser’s pilgrimage to Rome, and the curtain rises on Elisabeth in prayer asking for her hero’s return. Wolfram, ever vigilant, and keeping an eye on Elisabeth, offers her comfort, and together they watch a group of pilgrims returning from Rome (Thuringia seems to be on a major pilgrimage route), singing the great Pilgrims’ Chorus as they pass. Tannhäuser is not among them. They fear the worst. Wolfram offers to accompany Elisabeth back to the Wartburg, but she refuses, indicating that Heaven is her preferred destination. Another bad omen!
Wolfram sings the wonderful Song to the Evening Star (Venus, of course, oops!), and discovers the haggard Tannhäuser lurking in the valley, looking for you know who. He tells Wolfram that he went to Rome and asked for absolution from the Pope, but his sins were too great, and he was banished from Rome too, the Pope declaring that, until his papal staff began to grow leaves again, Tannhäuser would never find peace. At the end of this great aria, he screams for Venus to take him back, and indeed she comes out from her mountainous boudoir to claim him. Wolfram realises that only one name will break the spell and invokes it. ‘Elisabeth!’ Tannhäuser’s madness is dissolved, along with Venus and her houris, as a funeral procession comes down the valley, bearing Elisabeth’s body. It seems that her longing for Heaven has been achieved, rather quickly, and Tannhäuser collapses beside her coffin asking her for absolution and dying. Many Wagnerian heroes die at the end of his operas, often from unknown causes. Here, a second group of younger pilgrims appear (walking faster, one assumes), with the astounding news that the Pope’s staff has indeed borne leaves. It is a miracle, granting grace to the penitent, and entry into Heaven, where Tannhäuser and Elisabeth can be united, and the opera ends with a rousing rendition of the Pilgrims’ Chorus.
It’s not Wagner’s greatest opera by any means, and indeed Wagner was not satisfied with it to the end of his life, but it is packed with wonderful music, and there is a sort of happy ending. Wagner’s fascination with redemption through love, the recurring theme of all his operas, is made most clear here, especially as we see the two sides of love so directly opposing each other. It’s amusing to note that in his own life, he was a notorious philanderer, following the erotic path wherever he went, but anyone trying to make sense of Wagner’s life, his ideals and his principles, his philosophy, his politics has a hard task. It is clear he was a thoroughly unpleasant figure, but charismatic to the nth degree and boy, was he some composer!
I hope some of our readers can get to the Usher Hall on the 25th and experience this genius in what will be a great performance. If you can’t make the concert, you will be able to read my review shortly after. There is no definitive recording, as all the available ones have some flaw or drawback, but my personal favourite is the Georg Solti version, from 1970, on Decca, with Rene Kollo as Tannhäuser. This superb German tenor had an unfortunate habit of aspirating every note, adding an H to each note in a sequence. When I worked with the wonderful soprano, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, she told me that her greatest bugbear was the intrusive H. However, if you can ignore this flaw, Kollo sings the role magnificently. The ideal recording of Wolfram’s famous ‘Song to the Evening Star’ is by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau on the 1960 EMI recording. Don’t get the whole recording, because the Tannhäuser is execrable, but isolate ‘O du mein holder Abendstern’ for perfection of singing and interpretation.
