Superconductor Audio Guide: Tannhäuser

Caught between two worlds, two women and two versions of the same opera.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The medieval knight Heinrich von Ofterdingen, known to all as "Tannhäuser."
Photo re-coloring by the author.

Wagner planned Tannhäuser to be a grand opera, not a grand, sweeping statement on the nature of duality and the divided self. But it is. On one level, this is the story of a medieval minstrel knight (the title character, pronounced "TAHN-hoy-zer") who tries to win a song contest. However, the hero is doomed from the start, trapped between his lust for the goddess Venus and his chaste love for the pure, saintly Elisabeth. This opera is an examination of the artist in a divided state of ones self, destroyed by the effort to meet all of one's needs at once.

Opera Review: To Venus and Back

Wagner's Tannhäuser returns to the Met.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Meeting Venus: the goddess (Michelle DeYoung, left) seduces Tannhäuser
(Johan Botha, right) in the first act of Richard Wagner's opera Tannhäuser. 
Photo by Marty Sohl © 2015 The Metropolitan Opera.

On Thursday night, the Metropolitan Opera revealed its lone Wagner offering of the current season, a revival of the company's worn but much loved 1977 production of Tannhäuser from the team of Otto Schenk and Gunther Schneider-Siemssen. The problem child among Wagner's thirteen operas, Tannhäuser is the story of an itinerant minstrel knight (the title character, played here by tenor Johan Botha) caught between his love for the saintly Elisabeth and his erotic obsession with the goddess Venus and her underground pleasure palace, a plot element that led Wagner to consider naming the work Der Venusberg, or "The Mountain of Venus." Eventually, good taste prevailed.

He-Dropped a Lulu, It Was His Baby

James Levine pulls out, we don't mean maybe.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

She's dangerous: Marliss Peterson's Lulu has claimed her first victim.
Photo by Kristian Schuller © 2015 The Metropolitan Opera.

The Metropolitan Opera's new production of Lulu, the Alban Berg tale of a femme fatale who leaves a trail of bodies in her wake has claimed its first victim: music director James Levine.

Recordings Review: This Guy in the House of Love

The 1963 Herbert von Karajan Tannhäuser on DG.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Hans Beirer as Tannhäuser, Vienna, 1963.
Photo © 1998 Deutsche Grammophon/UMG/Archives of the Vienna State Opera.

In his five decades on the podium, the late Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan committed nine of the ten "canon" Wagner operas to disc. He made studio recordings with Berlin, Vienna and Dresden, releasing these performances for EMI Classics (Tristan, Lohengrin, Dutchman, Meistersinger) and Deutsche Grammophon (Parsifal and the Ring.) The missing opera was Tannh äuser, a work which eludes any sort of definitive set-in-stone interpretation. In 1998, this recording was finally released on DG. If you can find an import copy of this recording, you can finally hear Karajan's take on Wagner's most problematic mature work.

Film Review: Just Don't Lend Him Money

Sir Richard Burton as Richard Wagner.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Obsessive genius: Sir Richard Burton as Richard Wagner in Wagner.
Image © 1983 Hungarofilm/Kultur.

The turbulent life of composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) is a fascinating and at times repellent subject. Tony Palmer's film is now available on Amazon Prime, allowing the curious and the dedicated to take a leisurely tour through this  expansive retelling of the convoluted life of the German composer. Divided here into three manageable episodes of three hours each, it is an experience that all serious Wagner lovers should try at least once. Then again, the same may be said of a trip to Bayreuth.

Metropolitan Opera Preview: Tannhäuser

The last in a series of great Met Wagner productions returns.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Venusberg ballet in Act I of the Met production of Tannhäuser.
Photo © 2015 courtesy the Metropolitan Opera.

Tannhäuser is the last of six Wagner stagings by the team of Otto Schenk and Gunther Schneider-Siemssen to remain in the Metropolitan Opera repertory. This season, this gorgeous picture-postcard production (the Act II set is a detailed re-creation of the actual locale where the opera's singing contest takes place) returns to the Met stage, possibly for the final time. Johan Botha, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Michelle DeYoung and Peter Mattei are at the front of a superb cast under the baton of James Levine.

Who Wants to Be a Wagnerite?

or...Happy Birthday, Richard Wagner!
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Ernestine Schumann-Heink as Waltraute in Götterdämmerung.
Original photograph © Bettmann/Corbis. 

Festive birthday cupcake added by the author.

Today is Richard Wagner's 200th birthday, and rather than give you a listicle full of dubious recommendations for the best Ring Cycle or another review of a new recording of Die Walküre, I thought I'd talk about something important.

Wagner takes patience. Endurance. Commitment. And yes, it takes a certain degree of physical (and possibly emotional) masochism to sit through the Waltraute scene from Götterdämmerung or the marathon first act of Parsifal. Don't get me started on Die Meistersinger, a six-hour comedy that ends with the public humiliation of the local bureaucrat and a speech on the importance of "holy German art."

That's another column.

Concert Review: Mountains Come Out of the Sky (and they stand there)

Semyon Bychkov conducts the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Your mountain guide: conductor Semyon Bychkov led the MET Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
Image © RAI.

This weekend, the biggest story in the New York classical music scene remained the (impending) return of music director James Levine to conducting duties at the Metropolitan Opera. However, on Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall, it was the turn of another conductor to lead the MET Orchestra in the first of its subscription concerts this season.

Semyon Bychkov is a name familiar to opera goers and CD collectors, a talented Russian who has never quite seized the imagination of the general public. Currently in the middle of a run of Verdi's Otello at the opera house, Mr. Bychkov chose a sensible program for his first concert outing with the Met players: Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser overture and five Wesendonck Lieder followed by Richard Strauss' awe-inspiring Ein Alpensinfonie.

The result was an exceptional outing for both orchestra and conductor, with firm brass, a lush, pliant tone in the strings and a wealth of audible, finely balanced detail coming from the woodwinds. Maybe it was the good news about Mr. Levine. Maybe it was the choice of repertory.  Either way this seemed a particularly inspired afternoon for players and conductor, who all seemed somewhat relieved to be out of the orchestra pit.

The Ghost of Conductors Past

James Levine may cancel 2013-2014 performances at the Met.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The presence of conductor James Levine is fading from the Metropolitan Opera House.

Reports out of the Metropolitan Opera House  indicate more cancellations for James Levine.

Subscribers to the Metropolitan Opera's 2012-2013 season are already too aware that this is the company's first season in four decades without the presence of music director James Levine. But they may have to wait even longer to see the acclaimed conductor back at work.

An item in today's edition of parterre box indicates that the Metropolitan Opera has abandoned plans to revive Wagner's Parsifal and Tannhäuser next season. According to parterre's anonymous source, the likely replacements for these two works would be a revival of Antonín Dvořák's Rusalka and Alban Berg's Wozzeck.  

These two Wagner revivals were specifically tailored to the talents of Mr. Levine, a dedicated Wagnerian who has conducted these operas many times in his career. Parsifal, Wagner's final opera, is considered to be one of his specialties, a work he has recorded on three seperate occasions.

DVD Review: Minstrel in the Gallery

A Tannhäuser from Barcelona embraces the art world.
by Paul Pelkonen

Once upon a mattress: Tannhäuser (Peter Seiffert. left) confronts Venus
 (Bèatrice Uria-Monzon, standing) in Act I of Wagner's drama.
Photo by Anoni Bofill © 2008 Teatro Liceu de Barcelona.

In Robert Carsen's production of Tannhäuser (filmed in 2008 at the Teatro de Liceu in Barcelona), Wagner's medieval minstrel is reimagined as a contemporary artist, walking a tightrope between willing, naked figure models and the glitzy world of gallery openings.

Tannhäuser is about pilgrimage, whether the title character's own transition from the sensual world of Venus to our own, harsher reality or the treks to Rome and back in quest of redemption. In this staging, "reality" is the plastic world of a gallery opening, and a controversial new painting (presumably of Venus) is his "harp," the representation of artistic expression for the troubled knight.

Mr. Carsen keeps the curtain up for the famous overture, showing Tannhäuser (Peter Seiffert) hard at work painting a naked, reclining Venus. (This is the "Paris" version of the score so the music flows right into the Venusberg ballet. Here, Venus' sex club under a mountain becomes a sort of art school, with frenzied dancers imitating Tannhäuser's movements and creating their own canvases.

Green Hill Loses Greenbacks

Major Sponsor Pulls From Bayreuth Festival

The Bayreuth Festspielhaus opened in 1876

The Bayreuth Festival, founded in 1876 for the presentation and performance of the operas of Richard Wagner, has lost a major sponsor. 

Siemens, the German conglomerate which had regularly donated 1 million Euros to the Festival since 2008, announced yesterday in German newspaper Die Welt that their relationship with Bayreuth had ended.

The company had pumped the money into the festival in order to expand the festival's media presence under the leadership of Wagner's two great grand-daughters, Katerina Wagner and Eva Wagner-Pasquier. The two sisters  succeeded their father Wolfgang Wagner, who kept an iron grip over his grandfather's opera house for almost half a century.

In recent years, efforts to raise the profile of the festival have included a DVD release of Katherina Wagner's controversial staging of Die Meistersinger and a live web-cast of this year's Lohengrin, which reimagined the citizens of Brabant as lab rats trapped in a giant, horrifying experiment. The Festival's recent staging of Tannhäuser reimagined Wagner's medieval world as a series of biogas tanks. It met with a mostly negative reception.

The Bayreuth Festival opened in 1876 with the first production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. All operas are performed in the Festspielhaus, a unique, acoustically perfect auditorium designed by Wagner himself and funded by Ludwig II, the mad monarch who ruled Bavaria in the late 19th century.

Tanke Schön: Camilla Naylund as Elisabeth in the new Tannhäuser.
Photo by Enrico Nawath © 2011 Bayreuth Festival

Following the 1883 premiere of Parsifal and the subsequent death of Wagner himself, the Festival has remained a "family" business. Wagner's widow Cosima, his son Siegfried, and Siegfried's widow Winifred ran the opera house until 1943, when it was closed in the last years of World War II. Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner re-opened the house in 1951, recreating Bayreuth as a venue for experimental treatment of their grandfather's operas.

Since re-opening in 1951, Bayreuth has transformed itself from a hide-bound living museum, to become one of the most important venues for theatrical experimentation in staging Wagner's operas. In the 1970s, following the death of Wieland Wagner, his brother Wolfgang established Werkstatt Bayreuth to encourage experimental stagings of these great works. The repertory remains limited, confined to the ten mature Wagner operas and a season-opening performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

The Festival maintains a ten-year waiting list for tickets.

Movie Review: Meeting Venus

The comedy chronicling a particularly troubled production of Wagner's Tannhaüser was mostly ignored when it was released in 1991. At long last, Warner Archives has released it on DVD for the U.S. market.

Venus is the story of Hungarian conductor Zoltan Szanto, (Dutch actor Niels Arestrup) who has come to the "Opera Europa", a Paris-based international company "where you can be misunderstood in six different languages" to lead a new production of Tannhaüser.

Wagner's opera is the story of the medieval knight who is torn between his love for the saintly Elisabeth and his unearthly lust for the goddess Venus. As the married conductor begins an affair with his leading lady (played by Glenn Close and sung by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa), his personal life begins to mirror the complex world of Wagner's opera.

István Szantó's film captures the vibrant energy and backstage chaos of post-Communist Europe as the opera company's members try to overcome ego issues and language barriers to mount Tannhaüser. When a last-minute stagehands strike nearly kills the performance, the opera company's unique solution makes the entire film worth seeing.

At its heart, this is a movie about making music, and Meeting Venus includes some excellent excerpts from the opera, featuring the Philharmonia Orchestra led by Marek Janowski. The soundtrack includes the Pilgrim's Chorus, Elisabeth's "Dich, teurer Halle", and Wolfram's "Song to the Evening Star." Soloists include Rene Kollo (Tannhaüser), Waltraud Meier (Venus) and Håkan Hagegård (Wolfram.) Unfortunately, this cast only recorded highlights for the soundtrack and never got around to doing the entire opera.

Meeting Venus is released under the Warner Special Products label. The only way to get a copy is to order it direct from the studio, who will then manufacture the DVD and send it to you mail-order. It's not a perfect solution, but this underrated comedy is worth the effort for the opera lover.