“Tannhäuser” at the Bayreuth Festival 2023
By Oxana Arkaeva
Performance Attended on August 28th, 2023
“Tannhäuser,” based on a German legend and first performed in 1845 in the Royal Court Theatre in Dresden, unfolds in the medieval German town of Wartburg. The opera delves into profound themes of love, Christianity, redemption, freedom, and the struggle between sacred and profane love. It also serves as a reflection of the life and creative turmoil of the isolated artist, akin to Wagner’s own sentiments towards himself and his work.
The narrative evolves around the knight and minstrel Tannhäuser, torn between the allure of sensual pleasure and the quest for spiritual redemption. He departs from the Venusberg, a realm of decadence and sensuality, in search of absolution for his sins to return to a virtuous life. He participates in a song contest at Wartburg Castle but stuns the court with explicit references to the Venusberg. Consequently, he is banished and embarks on a pilgrimage to Rome, where the Pope tells him that he can only be forgiven if his dried wooden staff blossoms once more. Heartbroken and despairing, Tannhäuser returns to the Venusberg.
The Bayreuth 2023 production, directed by new Intendant of the Hamburg State Opera Tobias Kratzer and conducted by the remarkable Nathalie Stutzmann, marks a significant moment with Stutzmann as the second woman to lead the orchestra at Bayreuth, following Oxana Lyniv. Wagner’s score is replete with leitmotifs, a hallmark of his work, and showcases his early style, blending elements of Romanticism with German mythology. The illustrious Bayreuth Orchestra takes on a role reminiscent of the Greek chorus, rendering the music with grandeur, sorrow, yearning, and desire.
“Free in wanting, free in doing, free in enjoying” is an authentic quote from Wagner’s 1849 pamphlet on revolution and a central dramaturgical leitmotif in this production. The staging centers on two contrasting concepts of life and work: the pure, sacred, and the free, archaic, and unbridled one. The latter is embodied by four wandering performers: Tannhäuser as a clown, Venus in an erotically charged body suit, an Afro-American drag queen performer named Le Gateau Chocolat (Kyle Patrick), and petite actor Oscar (Manni Laudenbach) in a sailor suit with a drum. Each character embodies extremes in terms of otherness, freedom, transgressing boundaries related to gender, skin color, physicality, audacity, and a provocative challenge to bourgeois norms. Representing the pure, sacred world are pious Elisabeth, Tannhäuser’s former lover; Wolfram, his former friend; and a group of Tannhäuser’s former fellow minstrels (all good singers with Siyabonga Maqungo standing out as Walter von der Vogelweide), led by Landgraf Hermann (Günter Groisbock, with a beautiful bass voice and noble stage presence).
This production plays with the idea of blurring boundaries and the interplay between reality and fiction. Kratzer suggests that everything is theater, and everyone within the theater acts accordingly. Backstage life is revealed in real-time through a backstage camera during Act Two and is also staged. The production mercilessly portrays individual failures among the characters. Tannhäuser, vacillating between life as a clown, fulfillment of sexual desires, an inner yearning for performance, and pure love, ends up as a destitute vagabond. Klaus Florian Vogt, although vocally subdued, finds an exceptional opportunity as a film performer, with the camera favoring his face, prompting thoughts of his potential in cinema.
Elisabeth, portrayed by Elisabeth Teige, becomes a tragic figure plagued by borderline syndrome, engaging in self-harm and contemplating suicide. The soprano has a lovely timbre but unfortunate tremolo that disturbs. Wolfram, touchingly portrayed by Markus Eiche, is another tragic character, passionately attempting to rekindle the love between Elisabeth and Tannhäuser and persuade Tannhäuser to return to the stage. However, he succumbs to his desire for Elisabeth and subsequently fails too. The famous “Abendstern” song was sung in a heartbreakingly sad but beautiful manner. Venus, portrayed by Ekaterina Gubanova (heavy singing but a hilariously funny and convincing performance), does everything in her power to retain Tannhäuser, including breaking into the theater during the contest in Act Two, unfurling a banner with Wagner’s quote above the main entrance, disrupting the competition, and being apprehended by the police.
The blurring of boundaries and the clash between two worlds are artistically accentuated through stage design and costumes by Rainer Sellmaier. The main stage is divided into two sections: the upper half serves as a projection surface for videos, while the lower half features a glowing frame. A Disneyland-like camping site in Act One transforms into the green hill in front of the Bayreuth Festival. A hybrid of the ballroom and the singers’ hall of the actual Wartburg, complete with a catwalk shown in Act Two and a junkyard strewn with wrecked cars and a construction fence in Act Three. The production juxtaposes modernly dressed actors adorned with glitter, boas, and high heels against those in traditional theatrical and fairy tale attire. The addition of picturesque drone flight videos over the Wartburg and the Thuringian Forest by Manuel Braun reinforces the fusion of real and imaginary worlds.
Ultimately, the reality hits hard. The anarchic quartet disbands, and anarchy fails. Tannhäuser finds himself imprisoned, mirroring Wagner’s opera, where he embarks on a grueling pilgrimage to Rome. Little Oscar sits alone amidst car wreckage, preparing a meager soup. He tears up the poster bearing Wagner’s quote and uses it as toilet paper. Le Gateau Chocolat has become a star promoting their own women’s watch collection. The pilgrims from Rome have become garbage collectors. Tannhäuser is equally worn down, yearning to return to the Venusberg but desolate, cradling the lifeless body of Elisabeth like a reverse Pieta. The choral finale seems more like an aesthetic promise of salvation than salvation itself. In a concluding video, Tannhäuser and Elisabeth are seen arm in arm, driving off into the sunset—a romantic, possibly kitschy, but poignant image of two happy lovers, a dream that might have become reality.
Production team and cast:
| Conductor – Nathalie Stutzmann Staging – Tobias Kratzer Stage Design / Costumes – Rainer Sellmaier Light – Reinhard Traub Video – Manuel Braun Dramaturgy – Konrad Kuhn Choir – Eberhard Friedrich Landgraf Hermann – Günther Groissböck Tannhäuser – Klaus Florian Vogt Wolfram von Eschenbach – Markus Eiche Biterolf – Olafur Sigurdarson Elisabeth – Elisabeth Teige Venus – Ekaterina Gubanova Walther von der Vogelweide – Siyabonga Maqungo |
Singers, Staging, Orchestra 