Colin’s Cultural Corner
Tannhäuser - Royal Opera House
Well this was sick! Literally.
I had two seats as I’d decided to treat a friend. They were unfortunately not able to come so there was a spare seat. Offered it to another who said yes. They didn’t feel well and had to leave at the first interval. The singist playing Tannhäuser was too ill to sing but acted the role with someone singing in from the side. The singest supposed to be playing Elizabeth was so indisposed that an understudy performed that role.
Maybe it would have been good to have had it not quite so sick!
Orchestra was magnificent. A very full orchestra with a packed pit and at least eight boxes used to house extra harpists and brass players.
Now on to the meat of the thing…
I didn’t know the story (beyond it being about some mythical knight who sings a bit as he struggles with the concept of love vs lust) and I like my operas to come out all guns blazing from the very top. This one starts with a ballet rather than singing. And the ballet goes on. And on. It’s a balletic interpretation of an orgy and all I can think is that the choreographer has never been to an orgy.
After the orgy the singing starts and the plot is revealed to be about a very dysfunctional relationship between the Goddess of Love (basically Venus) and a man she’s plucked from Earth and a mortal existence and has made into a God (Tannhäuser himself).
He’s not happy living a debouched and easy life and tells her he’s off back to Earth as he needs to die and feel love. There’s a lot of back and forth where they each tell each other that they love them but want to go/make him stay until Venus says he can head off as she loves him so much.
He says “Thanks love! I’ll be off then!” and she then says that if he ever wants to come back to her she’ll refuse and damn the world of men to be a forever miserable place full of death and misery.
She then says she loves him again and he declares his love for her before he grows some balls, calls her out for her abusive power games and buggers off.
Somehow Tannhäuser wakes next to a lake where he meets a shepherd who may or may not be Christ, and bumps into old friends he knew before heading off to live with the gods.
They decide to have a proto-Eurovision song contest to celebrate his return/sort out any ill feelings and determine who gets the hand of Elisabeth who he left when he went to Orgyland years ago.
All of that was before the first interval.
Second act opens with the stage full of rubble at the set is a collapsed proscenium arch (modelled on that of the Opera house itself) and the song contest.
I’m not sure any of the numbers would win 12 points but the scene is a wow because it’s the first time we have the entire chorus on stage doing their thing. There’s roughly 200 of them so that’s impressive.
During his singing quite weird notions of what a Eurovision winning song would be Tannhäuser revealed he’s been with Venus. This is bad. Very bad. Elisabeth collapses and my thinking that for once maybe a female leading character won’t die at some point is challenged.
T is banished to Rome to seek absolution from the Pope who says no. You’ve sinned. No Redemption for you even if you can sing.
T returns to the Land of the Song Contest to find Elisabeth has died (she sort of walked off into the lake I guess. Maybe she comes back as the Lady of the Lake!) and he begs to return to Venus and her abusive power plays.
Venus reappears. Offers to welcome him back. He’s been pleading for about half an hour to return before she does this so of course with this being Opera he then decides not to go.
She’s heartbroken and sings about losing her true love.
Elisabeth is now revealed to be an Angel in heaven pleading the case for Tannhäusers redemption. That’s granted because the Pope starts gardening after his staff sprouts leaves and the shepherd boy plants a teeny tiny tree downstage centre.
All is forgiven. Tannhäuser turns to Christ. Venus is forced back to Venusberg/Hell and Elisabeth is still dead.
I’m still confused as to what actually happened and why Venus and her notion of love is regarded as being quite so bad and evil when they’re all basically trapped in dysfunction relationships but heigh ho it is what it is.
Apparently the incredibly long overture and the ballet orgy sequence at the top were inserted at the request of an impresario who wanted to give patrons time to dine between acts. Wagner said “Sure! I can do that” and then shoved it all at the opening of Act I meaning anyone who lingered at the dining table would enter in the middle of an orgy and die of embarrassment or something. Presumably they’d all get to sing about their shame/notions of lust/love before being packed off to Rome to seek absolution for being late.
A word or two on the lovely audience members I got talking to. First the gentleman who at 90 decided that life’s too short to wait and booked his first opera. He’s now 96 and sees everything at Covent Garden and the ENO and is off to see some things at the Met this year which will be his first time on a plane! He was a character!
Next I have to mention the lady sitting behind me who came up from Suffolk. First interval comes around and she whips out a flask with hot tea and a plate of finger sandwiches she’d brought.
Second interval saw more tea and scones she’d baked in the morning before coming to London.
She was staying in an hotel literally acting the corner from my home so we shared a cab after curtain. She was adorable!
Would I go and see Tannhäuser again? Yes I think I would. Not one of my top five perhaps especially as there are no tunes I’ll find myself humming over the next few days, but an entertaining, somewhat challenging piece with beautiful mass choral singing. And a bonkers plot of course. I’d take scones and a flask.
