LA Opera’s Tannhaüser review – please don’t rewrite Wagner

It ends badly. Not Richard Wagner’s masterpiece. Tannhaüser ends well. I mean this new production from Los Angeles Opera which opened on Sunday 24 October. And, as the ending of Tannhaüser is the apex of the medieval redemption story with which Wagner was fixated, get that wrong, and you’ve messed up.

And, boy, has the rookie Rhode Island director Louisa Muller screwed up. Briefly, the unabsolved sinner, Tannhaüser – confusingly also called Heinrich (the name Tannhaüser oddly never figures in the libretto) is, in the fading moments of the opera, redeemed by the love of the deceased, sainted Princess Elizabeth, lies down athwart her corpse resting on a bier, and joins her in heaven. 

That thirty seconds is the whole point of the preceding four hours. The resolution of a conflict between profane and pure love. The dead Elisabeth has redeemed the sinner. We reach this emotional climax and immediately understand what Wagner is getting at. It is like the final resolution of a long, disturbing, aching minor passage of music into a triumphant major key. 

In LA, Muller ruined an otherwise innovative production by having Tannhaüser stalk off backstage, very much alive. She cannot know better than Wagner but assumes she does. This twisting of the conclusion rendered the opera meaningless. Where was Tannhaüser heading? To Elisabeth’s funeral afterparty? 

A director’s interpretation is one thing. There are plenty of cutting-edge, eye-rolling re-settings of operas. I recall seeing a notorious production of Tannhaüser at Bayreuth, staged in an industrial recycling factory. He may have died in a dustbin, having travelled down a transparent plastic vacuum pipe. But at least Tannhaüser was dead. No matter, the audience still booed. 

When directors assume to rewrite operas, oblivious to the genius of the composer, they are assaulting a bridge too far. I was shouting at the screen – “Go write your own bl…y opera”. It was a Livestream, oddly not available as a recording, and runs until 6 November. No one listened, the cheek! I’m tempted to jump on a flight to LA and shout in person. Fellow shouters welcome. It really was that bad. 

That said, the ambience of the set was spare and beautiful. The principal characters and chorus clad in ethereal white, the Venusberg mountain under which the seductress, Venus, the seducer of Tannhaüser and embodiment of carnal lust, has her lair, glowed brothel ruby red. 

The court of the Venusberg, the Act II setting, was a soft, pastel grey. The hillside around the shrine where much of the action takes place was snow-covered. Snow was falling. A lot of snow was falling. All the time. Someone had bought a machine and was determined to use it. It was an enchanted space, ripe for medieval chivalry. 

The opera comes in a number of versions. This was the most often performed, the “Paris” version, sung in German. There is a version in French. The French premiere of Tannhaüser in 1861 was booed offstage by louts from the Paris Jockey Club. Wagner was furious. He wrote and rewrote Tannhaüser. Before he died in 1883, he lamented had had never given the world “the Tannhaüser I wanted.” Still, good effort.

At the time, he was locking horns with fellow German composer, Giacomo Meyerbeer. Wagner considered Meyerbeer an intellectual lightweight. The snag was, Meyerbeer was having runaway successes with operas like Les Huguenots and Robert le diable. Wagner wasn’t.

In Paris, the unbreakable tradition was incorporating a ballet sequence in operas – usually in the second act. Convention had it that the loutish dandies from the glitzy Jockey Club would dine, turn up for Act II and ogle their ladies performing a lascivious bacchanal.

Wagner would never interrupt his opera for a dance intermission, but he grumpily incorporated the ballet in what would typically be the overture slot. The boys from the Jockey Club had to pitch up early to leer at their mistresses cavorting onstage, missed their dinner and took their irritation out on Herr Wagner. 

Here’s what happens in Tannhaüser land. We are in the 13th century. Troubadours are troubadouring. Venus is Venusing. Sinners are pilgrimaging. All, except Tannhaüser, are repenting. 

Act I 

We are in Wartburg castle and environs, medieval Germany. The Minnesinger, a medieval troubadour, Tannhäuser – really Heinrich remember – has spent a carnally satisfactory year with Venus, the goddess of love. Contrarily, he longs to return to the human world. Perhaps he’s missing his mum. 

He asks Venus to let him go. Pissed off, Venus promises him even greater pleasures, but he insists. She furiously dismisses him and curses his desire for salvation.

Tannhäuser then presses the emergency button, crying out that his hope rests with the Virgin Mary. Suddenly, he finds himself transported to a valley near the castle of the Wartburg. He’s home.

A procession of pilgrims passes on the way to Rome. Tannhäuser is deeply moved. Horns announce the arrival of a hunting party. It is Landgrave Hermann with his knights. 

Recognising Tannhäuser as their long-lost friend, they beg him to return to the castle, but Tannhäuser is reluctant. 

Wolfram, one of the knights, reminds him that his singing once won him the love of Elisabeth, the Landgrave’s niece. On hearing her name, Tannhäuser decides on reconquest. Back to the castle. Wolfram is conflicted. He fancies Elisabeth something rotten. 

ACT II

Elisabeth joyfully greets the Wartburg’s Hall of Song, which she hasn’t set foot in since Tannhäuser left. Now, here he is, led in by Wolfram. At first shy and confused, Elisabeth tells Tannhäuser how she has suffered in his absence, then joins him in praise of love. Observing their emotional reunion, Wolfram realises that his own chances of winning Elisabeth are nil.

Landgrave Hermann is delighted to find his niece in the Hall of Song. They welcome their guests who have come for a song contest. The Landgrave declares love the subject of the competition and promises the victor will receive whatever he asks from the hand of Elisabeth. Double entendres all around.

Wolfram opens the contest with a gloopy tribute to idealised love. Tannhäuser, his thoughts still on Venus, replies with a hymn to worldly pleasures. Other singers counter his increasingly passionate declarations until Tannhäuser breaks out into his prize song to Venus, to the horror of the guests. 

Tannhaüser is profane. 

As the men draw their swords, Elisabeth throws herself between the parties to protect Tannhäuser and begs the knights for mercy. The Landgrave pronounces his judgment: Tannhäuser will be forgiven if he joins the pilgrims on their way to Rome to do penance. To Rome they go. We stay in Wartburg.

Astute readers, familiar with events in Germany after Martin Luther hid out in Wartburg castle, will wonder what all these Germans are doing dashing off to see the Pope. Of course, we are in medieval times and the Pope cannot be blanked. 

But Wagner, even though a shaky Lutheran, can’t bring himself to include the “P..e” word in the libretto. The pontiff is sniffily described as “the one through whom God speaks” instead. 

ACT III

Several months later, Wolfram comes across Elisabeth praying at a shrine in the valley. A band of pilgrims, back from Rome, passes by, but Tannhäuser is missing in action. Grief-stricken, Elisabeth prays to the Virgin Mary to receive her soul into heaven. Wolfram gazes after her, and in the transfixing aria, “O du mein holder Abendstern” (Song to the Evening Star) flags up Elisabeth’s imminent death. She will be an angel, the shining evening star. It is a highly poignant, pivotal moment. 

Night falls, and a solitary pilgrim approaches. It is Tannhäuser, ragged and weary. He tells Wolfram of his devout penitence on the way to Rome, of his joy at seeing so many others pardoned. And of despair when “the man through whom God speaks” proclaimed he could no more be forgiven for his sins than the wooden papal staff bear green leaves again.

This papal dismissal is accurately based on Catholic doctrine. Absolution cannot be given to a penitent unless there is a firm purpose of amendment. Tannhaüser clearly did not meet the firm purpose test. His Holiness was spot on. But as soon as Tannhaüser leaves, the Pope’s staff blossoms.  

Left without hope and unaware of the pontiff’s gardening miracle, Tannhaüser defiantly returns to Venus. He summons her, and she appears. Wolfram once again brings Tannhäuser to his senses by invoking Elisabeth’s name. 

At this moment, Elisabeth’s funeral procession comes winding down the valley. With a cry, Venus disappears. Tannhäuser implores Elisabeth to pray for him in heaven and collapses dead. As dawn breaks, another group of pilgrims arrives, telling of the miracle of the Pope’s staff. They’ve brought it with them. 

So, how long need your piece of Wagner’s string be to better understand what his romantic opera means? Libraries of interpretation lie mouldering. I went digging for something unusual on your behalf.

Here is where I am going to veer from the conventional path of academic discourse, go clean off the wall of the inevitable analysis of the composer’s infamous antisemitism. Save to say it was vile. In doubt? Read his essay, Das Judenthum in der Musik (The Jews in Music). It is simply a disgrace.

Let’s leave all that for the Wagner groupies. I’m going to take you on a different journey. If you really want to learn in an hour or so what Richard Wagner and Tannhaüser is all about, watch Twilight of the Gods, a 2013 film conceived, written and directed by Julian Doyle, better known for Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Not so well known for commenting on Wagner’s Parsifal grail gang, or anything Wagnerian at all.

The action is grounded in the long, often combative relationship of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the composer. They irreconcilably fell out in 1876. Nietzsche thought Parsifal a shallow crowd pleaser. Having been close, they never spoke again. Wagner died without a reconciliation.

Doyle imagines the dead Wagner appears to Nietzsche, and they have a dialogue. Nietzsche is being detained in the Turin lunatic asylum. He had been assaulted and rendered unconscious while defending a horse being beaten in a Turin square. He would never recover his sanity.

The film is beautifully crafted and wondrously acted. Jud Charlton as Nietzsche delivers a Shakespearian performance of self-containment, humour and bursts of sharp-tongued raving that would have had David Garrick quit the stage in despair, run back to the family wine business and blub into his port, hunched in that Garrick Club chair.

Richard Franklin is the haunting composer ex-friend who discreetly fades whenever Annie Walker, a Sister of Mercy, comes into the room to tend to Nietzsche. She unstraps him from his confining chair. Mops his brow. Feeds him soup. In a Pythonesque detail, her patient continues the conversation with the invisible ghost and Sister Mercy chips in, under the illusion he’s speaking to her.

Think, “he’s not the Messiah, he’s just a naughty little boy” sort of dialogue. Deftly done, preventing the high-level intellectual debate driving the plot from becoming too high flown.

The brain jousting is compelling. I enjoyed the film so much I dug out Doyle’s production company details and shot off an email of appreciation. Astonishingly, he responded at once, telling me, “it was a labour of love”. And that, when all is said and done, is how Wagner grabs you. You either hate his music and operas, or you love them. Whatever the flawed character of the man.

Everyone is free to do either. But a pox on directors, like Muller, who think they know better than he and destroy Wagnerian masterpieces on a whim, to be self-consciously different. The disillusioned Friederich Nietzsche would have called her out. Maybe Doyle is up for a sequel.