<<  -- 5 --  Malcolm Miller    THE BAYREUTH EXPERIENCE

Tannhäuser, 10 August 2006, Dresden Version :

As mentioned earlier, Tannhäuser scored highly in all its aspects: musical, dramatic and visual. Throughout, conductor Christoph Thieleman galvanised the orchestra and 140-strong chorus into a magnificent well-oiled organism, driving through with masterly pacing to powerful Furtwanglerian climaxes and allowing the fanfares and choruses full-throttle whilst holding back and enabling contrapuntal transparency in many places, including the solo arias.

The singing was superb. Ricarda Merbeth's Elisabeth showed a rich silvery resilience, especially in her Act III Prayer aria, matched by the lyrical delicacy of Clemens Bieber as Wolfram von Eschenbach; both formed a counterfoil to the passionately vibrant Venus of Judit Nemeth, Stephen Gould's strong Tannhäuser and the forthright Guido Jentnens as his uncle the Landgraf.

Colourful sets and costumes injected special potency: diamond-shaped grey caves for the Act I Venusburg scene transformed into bright green, red-poppy splattered hills and pastures in scene II, the Pilgrim's chorus, appearing from afar and descending into the front stage, recalling a pre-Raphaelite painting. The Wartburg was a vast interior, red-gold astronaut hats and robes lending the chorus, spread across the arena, suggesting a sci-fi version of a Breughel painting. The cavernous space was interrupted by a giant diagonal blue light shaft from base to ceiling, the quasi-phallic symbolism dominated the harp and string textured singing competition, wittily staged with such delightful touches as Elisabeth drawing each singer's name from a lottery and Tannhäuser's bawdy highlighting of the sword in Walter's song.

Most arresting were the freeze-frame effects with the crowd changing positions sporadically during the closing section in which Elisabeth defends Tannhäuser, as if to suggest two distinct zones of action: public and private. In the final Act the green hills of Act I returned transfigured, bathed in cool moonlit glow with glinting stars; Elisabeth's 'Prayer' was serenely projected while in 'O du mein holder Abendstern', Wolfram projected at a tantalising, reverential pianissismo to huge applause. Tannhäuser's narration of his journey to Rome was riveting, its proto-Tristanesque rising bass motifs exploding into climactic chromaticism at the invocation of the Pope's excommunication, the whole sequence paced for maximum impact of the final redemptive appearance of Elisabeth, brought in bedecked in flowers, her pose recalling the pre-Raphaelite Millais' famous Ophelia, the final chorus resonating long in the memory.

Verses reflecting on the 'Pilgrims' Chorus' in the 2005 Bayreuth Tannhäuser:

Through my head go noble strains,
The song of Pilgrims free from pains,
Each glorious harmony and sound
Rising high above the ground:
'Tis Wagner aflight on the wings of song,
With beauty still, and warm and strong.
Each phrase overlapping, growing in power
Each petal of music's harmonious flower.

The Poppy field idyll in green and red
With blue lipped sky where lovers lie dead;
So sad, so touching, their torments ended
The red robed Venus to her cavern descended.
The Pilgrims sing on to a hushed final phrase
Their hallowed heavenly chorus of praise.

-- © Malcolm Miller, 11 August 2005

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