Bayreuth Festival.
*****
This is proof that imaginative staging and interpretation that retains the spirit and intention of an opera can defy what at first seems a strange and even blasphemous offering of Tannhäuser.
Director Tobias Kratzer and his creative team merge actual performance on the Bayreuth stage with live backstage video and pre-recordings, taking what at first appears massive liberties with the work, even adding new characters. There is even an interval cabaret performance on the “lake” on the festival house hill that not only complements but becomes integral to the story telling.
Last year I took my opera partner to Wartburg a few days before, where Wagner based his opera on the medieval legend of the singing competition at this most important of German castles. We drove through the Thuringian forest and then made our way to Bayreuth.
This is just how the Kratzer production begins with a video played on a huge screen showed that magnificent castle on its rocky escarpment, swooped over the Thuringian forest to show a vintage Citroen van (with a rabbit on its top) and inside Tannhäuser as the troupe’s clown.
The van is driven by a no-nonsense Venus in a one-piece leotard while her companions, the drumming dwarf Oskar (as in the boy in Tin Drum) and drag star performer Le Gateau Chocolat, complete the avantegarde, revolutionary artist gang, challenging norms and stealing their way through the world. This is the liberated Venusberg that Tannhäuser has joined, having rejected the old world of the Wartburg. It is of course the world of Elisabeth too that he has rejected.
However, when Venus intentionally runs over a Burger King security guard who has caught them stealing petrol and doing a runner from the drive-through, Tannhäuser lurches back to reality and rejects their pleasure-filled world – and a passing cyclist tells him to go to Rome. He first goes to Bayreuth but that comes later in the fun.
In the first interval the cabaret includes Le Gateau Chocolat singing Old Man River, Madonna’s Vogue and the Spice Girls Wannabe and I Am What I Am. Le Gateau Chocolat finished by unfurling a LGBTQ+ flag as Venus sings some numbers before painting white words on a huge black poster. This is a 21st century Venusberg – yet we also know that what is seemingly radical has become the conventional, the norm. I wonder whether Le Gateau Chocolat realises that the representation at the opera’s finale is the performer’s own reality.
The audience finds its way back up the hill and Act Two begins with us at the Wartburg and the singing is about to begin. The stage and then the video shows us that we are really at the Festspielhaus for a performance of the opera Tannhäuser. The pilgrims are festival goers, and the cast of the opera come outside and meet up with Tannhäuser.
The stage is split into two halves so that we can see the live performance on the stage. But we can also see in the top half what is happening backstage. Cleverly that includes the players being filmed so that we see them walk on to the actual stage and shots of them on the stage taken from the wings.
So, the point of the interval cabaret? On the video screen we see Venus and her colleagues arriving, finding a ladder, and climbing on to the opera house front balcony. They unfurl that banner which reads: “FREELY WILLING. FREELY DOING. FREELY ENJOYING” from Wagner’s revolutionary days. They have come back to win back Tannhäuser.
Once inside the opera house Venus ambushes a singer in the toilets and puts on her costume and walks on to the live action. It is all very funny but also totally in keeping with the sense of the work. This also applies to Le Gateau Chocolat and Oskar investigating backstage and accidentally walking across the actual stage. The drama of Tannhäuser and the singing competition is mirrored in the antics of Venue, Le Gateau Chocolat and Oskar. However, it is also desperately dark as Elisabeth reveals the scars where she has tried to kill herself having lost Tannhäuser and the unrequited love of Wolfram is also accentuated. We also have a new element this year with Oskar raising a glass in memory of Stephen Gould, the production’s first Tannhäuser.
In the video, as the troupe wreaks havoc Katharina Wagner is alerted, and the Bayreuth police are called, and their cars screech up the hill to the opera house and they then also appear on stage to arrest Tannhäuser and take him away. Le Gateau Chocolat has meanwhile draped the same LGBTQ+ flag over the harp.
Act Three begins with the Venusberg has been reduced to a scrap heap. The van is a wreck and when the pilgrims arrive, they scavage what they can. Elisabeth arrives looking for Tannhäuser and is looked after by Oskar until Wolfram also appears.
At Elisabeth’s insistence Wolfram puts on the clown costume and wig, and she seduces him, insisting he keeps the clown wig on, presumably so she can imagine she is with Tannhäuser. She then wanders around looking for an implement to kill herself with. It is in this desperately sad context, while she is still actually alive, Wolfram sings his perfect Evening Star final aria.
Tannhäuser does reappear from Rome, looking dishevelled and tears up the score for this role that we have seen in Act One.
There are two shocking revelations. A huge advertising sign turns round, and it is Le Gateau Chocolat who rather than being the representative of revolution, of outsiders, of freedom and liberation, is now part of the mainstream and promoting diamond encrusted watches. The second is Wolfram reveals Oskar with the dead Elisabeth. In a reverse Pieta, Elisabeth is put into Tannhäuser’s arms.
As if it could not get any sadder, and the tears have already started, the opera ends with a video projection of Tannhäuser and Elisabeth driving in their van through the countryside.
Conductor Nathalie Stutzmann repeats her triumph of last year and produced music from the orchestra that is as glorious as in 2023. Klaus Florian Vogt again sang a thoughtful, sympathetic Tannhäuser. His bright lyrical tenor warms the soul. The exquisite soprano Elisabeth Teige sang the most luxurious Elisabeth, and her final aria is heart-breaking. Marcus Eiche’s creamy singing of Wolfram’s Song to the Evening Star is heavenly. Irene Roberts is a captivating Venus, rich in humour but also pathos.
Oskar was played by Manni Laudenbach and Le Gateau Chocolat played himself. Günther Groissböck sang a stately Landgrave while Siyabonga Maqungo acted well and was an appropriately charmingly voiced Walther von der Vogelweide.
Kratzer’s concept works perfectly. It is not without some irony, which from programme notes, is not lost on the director that he is now part of that opera establishment as Intendant at Hamburg Staatsoper.
https://www.bayreuther-festspiele.de/
Tristan und Isolde, Bayrueth Festival, 2024 review: https://operascene.co.uk/reviews/a-tristan-und-isolde-death-cult-bayreuth-festival/
Götterdämmerung, Bayreuth Festival, 2024 review: The gods fizzle out. Götterdämmerung at Bayreuth.
2 thoughts on “A refreshingly intelligent and entertaining Tannhäuser.”