Covent Garden's new ‘Tannhäuser’

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden - 29/01/23

One of this season’s Royal Opera flagship new productions was badly damaged on its first night by the inability of Stefan Vinke, cast as Tannhäuser, to sing. He walked the part whilst it was sung from the side by Austrian tenor Norbert Ernst. I don’t want to be too critical. Mr Ernst was clearly dragged in at the last minute, but it should be said he was not quite up to what is a very demanding role. The real question many people were asking is why didn’t they have an understudy for this major role? When Jonas Kaufmann went sick doing ‘Fidelio’, David Butt Philip did an excellent job as stand in and indeed appears on the video.

This was a great sadness, because this is a very good new production of Tannhäuser. It is directed by Tim Albery, designed minimally but tastefully by Michael Levine, with great choreography by Jasmin Vardimon and great dancing in the Venusberg scene. The orchestra were superb under Sebastian Weigle, and the chorus, including the children’s chorus, fabulous under chorus director William Spaulding.

All the other singers were excellent: Ekaterina Gubanova as Venus was sexy and dangerous, Mika Kares was imposing as Herman, Gerald Finley was outstanding as Wolfram, Olafur Sigurdarson was a good Biterolf, standing in for Michael Krause. Above all Lise Davidsen was superb as Elisabeth. She towered over the men in presence and in power. She is undoubtedly the Wagnerian soprano of her time. It is worth seeing this ‘Tannhäuser’ for her alone, in fact they could rename it Elisabeth for the rest of the run! Let’s hope that Stefan Vinke can sing the next one by Wednesday; if not a substitute brought in. Until then this first night will be remembered for ‘Tannhäuser’ without Tannhäuser!

Cover photo: Clive Barda