A Timely Old “Tannhäuser” at the Met

The Met’s current revival of Otto Schenk’s 1977 production of Wagner’s Tannhäuser is an event unthinkable in any European house – perhaps unthinkable in any other American house. Designed by Gunther Schneider-Siemssen, this was a rare attempt to faithfully render Wagner’s complex scenic intentions, albeit with access to instruments of stagecraft unavailable in Wagner’s time. The result was an unimpeachably Romantic staging of a Romantic grand opera – with no questions asked about hidden agendas or old-fashioned thinking. 

I well remember Andrew Porter’s ecstatic New Yorker review, which hailed a triumphant antidote to revisionist Regietheater. “A twentieth century landmark in the history of Wagner staging,” he called it. “As far as I know, it represents the first attempt any major company has made in more than a quarter of a century . . . to do a Wagner opera in the way Wagner asked for it to be done.” Porter urged the Met to undertake a Schenk/Schneider-Siemssen Ring. And the Met did precisely that – with disappointing results. The Ring is a music drama exploring archetypes, not a Romantic opera invoking thirteenth-century German history. But the Schenk Tannhäuser worked its magic. And it proves just as presentable — and arguably more necessary —  in 2023.

Many points of conjunction between what the ear hears and the eye sees are unforgettably clinched. The action begins with the erotic Venusberg. Wagner asks for “a wide grotto which, as it curves towards the right in the background, seems to be prolonged till the eye loses it in the distance. From an opening in the rocks, through which the daylight filters dimly, a greenish waterfall plunges down the whole height of the grotto, foaming wildly over the rocks; out of the basin that receives the water a brook flows to the further background; it there forms into a lake, in which Naiads are seen bathing, while Sirens recline on its banks.” Schneider-Siemssen wisely doesn’t attempt all of this – but he poetically renders enough of it to get the job done. At the climax of the Venusberg orgy, Wagner makes everything suddenly and cataclysmically vanish, to be replaced by “a green valley. . . blue sky, bright sun. In the foreground is a shrine to the Virgin. A Shepherd Boy is blowing his pipe and singing.” A credulous rendering of this transformation, abetted by Wagner’s musical imagination, proves as breathtaking today as half a century ago.

At the opera’s close, Tannhäuser expires alongside Elisabeth’s bier, and young pilgrims arrive with a flowered staff betokening his foregiveness. Nowadays, this ending is variously revised. It is considered toxic or tired. But faithfully conjoined with the reprise of the Pilgrims’ Chorus, it remains overwhelming. I attended Tuesday night’s performance with a devout Christian who objects that Wagner presents Tannhäuser’s redemption as a reward for repentance (“Christ died for our sins”). Another companion, at the same performance, objects that the opera’s discourse on duty and honor seems terribly Germanic in a musty way. Alternatively, Tannhäuser can be read and re-read as an argument against self-indulgence. I discover, for myself, that none of this really matters. I now mainly discover in Tannhäuser an emotional purgative or therapy – it powerfully exercises feelings of compassion. 

The arts are today vanishing from the American experience. There is a crisis in cultural memory. How best keep Tannhäuser alive? Flooded with neophytes, the Metropolitan Opera audience is very different from audiences just a few decades ago. What I observed at the end of Tannhäuser was an ambushed audience thrilled and surprised. The Met is cultivating newcomers with new operas that aren’t very good. A more momentous longterm strategy, it seems to me, would be to present great operas staged in a manner that reinforces – rather than challenges or critiques or refreshes – the intended marriage of words and music. For newcomers to Wagner, an updated Tannhäuser would almost certainly possess less “relevance” than Schenk’s 46-year-old staging – if relevance is to be measured in terms of sheer visceral impact. 

About Tuesday’s performance: Reviving the Schenk Tannhäuser would be pointless without the forces to do Wagner some degree of justice. And standard repertoire at the Met, these days, is never a sure thing. The current cast offers nothing remotely comparable to Leonie Rysanek’s Elisabeth or James McCracken’s Tannhäuser of 1977 – to say nothing of such legendary Met Wagnerites as Lotte Lehmann and Lauritz Melchior. The first 45 minutes are a loss. The Venusberg ballet seems interminable. I could not detect a single word sung by Venus. Later on, the Wolfram is at best an acquired taste: Christian Gerhaher talks his way through the part. But the Met’s current Tannhäuser and Elisabeth – Andreas Schager and Elza van den Heever – rise sufficiently to the occasion. Neither is vocally resplendent – but both singing and acting are honest and informed, audible and visible. The conductor, Donald Runnicles, capably steers the big climaxes.  The chorus is terrific.

It is by now apparent that the current Met orchestra suffers from an odd defect: the violins are at all times overbalanced. Regardless of venue or seat location, they register with insufficient volume and energy. (I am by no means alone in this opinion.) Perpetuating cultural memory is a challenge for everyone – onstage, in the pit, in the house. I discern scant evidence that these youngish string players love the operas they perform. The Venusberg music, in particular, is a faded cartoon unless purveyed with sustained intensity. Just listen to Artur Bodanzky’s torrid Met orchestra of 1936 and you’ll hear what I am talking about: a harrowing vortex of feeling. In the pit, the Schwung and bite of the low strings, animating the Landgraf’s arid speeches, the urgency and precision of the reckless violin riffs, are feats no longer associated with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.  

But this 1936 Tannhäuser broadcast is Melchior’s show. If in his lifetime he was somewhat taken for granted, it was partly because his consistency of achievement (at least until Bodanzky died) was absolute. On this occasion, every encounter with Lawrence Tibbett’s Wolfram strikes sparks. The third act’s Mitleid moment – where Wolfram’s unexpected compassion ignites Tannhäuser’s tortured confessional narrative – is so believable that the incredulity of Tannhäuser’s gratitude seems wholly unrehearsed. Porter, in his New Yorker review, discovered authenticity in the Met’s Tannhäuser of 1977. But it is Melchior, in 1936, who realizes the Olympian expectations Wagner specified: that in act two Tannhäuser’s  “Erbarm dich mein” must become the drama’s titanic linchpin; that in act three Tannhäuser must exude a terminal weariness both physical and existential. 

Not so long ago, the 1936 Bodanzky Tannhäuser was only accessible to opera fanatics on rare LPs. These days, it’s an under-utilized tap on youtube. As a prized morsel of cultural memory, it remains indispensable. But an 87-year-old broadcast recording in faded sound, sans scenery and stage activity, can only retain pertinence if we possess the means — and also the mindset — to recreate a vital re-embodiment in our vexed twenty-first century.

Follow-up blogs:

“Tannhäuser” — Take Two

“Tannhäuser” — Take Four