Germany Bayreuth Festival 2024 [4] – Wagner, Tannhäuser: Soloists, Bayreuth Festival Chorus and Orchestra / Nathalie Stutzmann (conductor). Festspielhaus, Bayreuth, 4.8.2023. (MB)
Production:
Director – Tobias Kratzer
Set designs – Rainer Sellaier
Lighting – Reinhard Traub
Video – Manuel Braun
Dramaturgy – Konrad Kuhn
Chorus director – Eberhard Friedrich
Cast:
Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia – Günther Groissböck
Tannhäuser – Klaus Florian Vogt
Wolfram von Eschenbach – Markus Eiche
Walther von der Vogelweide – Siyabonga Maqungo
Biterolf – Olafur Sigurdarson
Heinrich der Schreiber – Martin Koch
Reinmar von Zweter – Jens-Erik Aasbø
Elisabeth – Elisabeth Teige
Venus / Page – Irene Roberts
Young Shepherd – Flurina Stöckl
Le Gateau Chocolat – Le Gateau Chocolat
Oskar – Manni Laudenbach
Pages – Simone Lerch, Laura Margaret Smith, Annette Gutjahr
Adieu or au revoir, I asked myself when leaving the Festspielhaus, but also from time to time during this performance of Tannhäuser. It will not, I hope, be adieu to the Bayreuth Festival. My years of attendance pale in comparison to those of many, but regular visits have become part of my musical, intellectual, and indeed social life, and I should be sorry to see that come to an end. But would it be to Tobias Kratzer’s production, and to the characters it has not only portrayed and explored but created, with lives, personalities, and possibilities of their own? The closest parallel that presented itself to me, perhaps ironically, was that of Frank Castorf’s Ring (article here), which I also saw here three times, and to which by the end I had become quite attached. Even now, I sometimes wonder fancifully whatever became of Nadine Weissmann’s Erda, following Wotan’s brutal dismissal of her at (Al-)Exanderplatz. Somehow, ridiculous though this may sound, I should like to know that, a bit like Sue Ellen in Dallas, she battled through. For Kratzer’s similarly classic – less controversially so – staging, time will tell. 2024 was scheduled to be its final outing, but there are plausible rumours that Le Gateau Chocolat and the gang will take the stage one more time two summers from now, when Bayreuth is due to give all works from The Flying Dutchman on, adding Rienzi for the first time in the Festspielhaus, for the Festival’s sesquicentenary.
As intelligent as it is entertaining (not necessarily a word one instantly associates with this opera), Kratzer’s metatheatrical, Ariadne-like Tannhäuser thus became all the more moving for me on this occasion, though I think that may also be attributed to a slight shift in tone. At its heart – it has a big heart – lies the opposition, faithful to Wagner’s own binaries and attempts to bridge them, between the world of the Wartburg and that of the Venusberg: the former as presented at Bayreuth, the latter a defiantly alternative, joyous troupe made up of Tannhäuser, his lover Venus, and two fellow artists, the fabulous Le Gateau Chocolat (as herself) and the enchanting Oskar (as in Günter Grass’s Oskar Matzerath, played by Manni Laudenbach with tin drum). They too make art; they too can be uncompromising; but differently, as in life, and in that they are quite unapologetic. The Overture – for better or worse, this is the Dresden Tannhäuser – shows through a mixture of film and staging our players on the road, running out of food and fuel, having to make an emergency stop at a service station to replenish supplies, only to be (almost) caught by a policeman. Venus, to the horror of the others, puts her foot down in a hit-and-run incident, occasioning Tannhäuser’s jump from the van and departure from the band. A lovely touch this year, was early on to have Oskar, lump in his throat, drink a shot in memory of Stephen Gould, the production’s first Tannhäuser.
Found by a passing cyclist (the Shepherd), Tannhäuser proceeds to rejoin his former singers on the Festspielhügel, the Festival audience making its way around their discussions, in order to be present at the performance. As the first act is drawing to a close, Venus, Le Gateau Chocolat, and Oskar make their way to the Green Hill to win Tannhäuser back. Much of the actual audience – all who wish – then make their way down to the pond at the foot of the actually existing hill, for the cabaret show they have devised, beautifully compered by Le Gateau Chocolat, who draws proceedings (her own rendition of ‘Dich teure Halle’ included) to a close with a call for Bayreuth to come out of the closet and display the Progress Pride Flag, a poignant and necessary call for queer liberation in the age of JD Vance and JK Rowling.
For the second act, we move inside the Festspielhaus/traditional Wartburg, video taking us backstage, both for preparations (with fine, detailed work both by the live film crew and members of the chorus) and for events for which the house is anything but prepared. In explicit homage to the young German Wagner, members of the troupe invade the temple of bourgeois art, reminding us who Wagner really was and what he stood for with the banner unfurled from the storied balcony at the front of the house: quoting the composer’s torrential revolutionary catechism, Die Revolution, of 1849: ‘Frei im Wollen/Frei im Thun/Frei im Geniessen/R[ichard] W[agner]’. Freedom in desire, deed, and pleasure offers an obvious, glaring contrast with the professed values of the Minnesänger, as of course Wagner proceeds to show in the song contest, here crashed by our alternative artists, Venus pushing herself forward as an ersatz Page (a phrase behind in the first instance). Eventually, a security guard alerts Katharina Wagner, who calls the police to arrest Tannhäuser, notably leaving a dejected, broken troupe behind as the curtain falls.
No one is a winner here, then, and certainly not Elisabeth, whom we meet again in a desolate landscape, the van burned out, tasting soup Oskar has made. What has happened in the meantime can largely be left to our own imagination, but it is clear that the troupe has broken up and Elisabeth has similarly lost almost everything. If, moreover, she has not lost her final gift (or curse), she will do so shortly to Wolfram, though only because he agrees to dress as Tannhäuser, clown wig and all. It was clearly not a good idea; it does not seem to have brought them any joy; but in the absence of anything better in art or life, they felt a compulsion to do so in the back of the van. Only Le Gateau Chocolat, we learn, has made it, advertising watches from a giant billboard above. When Tannhäuser returns, he tears to pieces his own score in despair, pages littering the stage until tales of the Papal miracle reach us. Life having in crisis supplanted art – this is not a Nietzschean aestheticism, nor was Wagner’s – we see on film at the close an alternative path, which may or may not offer consolation: Tannhäuser and Elisabeth, riding off in the van into the sunset. Perhaps another day, in another world.
None of this would amount to much without committed performances from all concerned. All principal roles other than Venus were played by the same artists I heard last year. Ekaterina Gubanova will return for the final two performances, but here she was replaced with Irene Roberts, who uncannily resembled her (tribute not least to those working in costumes and make-up). Her performance was alive, arresting, and unsentimental: very much what was required. Klaus Florian Vogt’s Tannhäuser was beautifully sung, tirelessly acted: another intelligent portrayal. Some do not like his voice or think it appropriate; it is for them, as his gang might (perhaps more colourfully) tell us, to deal with it. Elisabeth Teige gave another excellent performance as her namesake, showing strength and subtlety in her tragedy. Markus Eiche’s often tenor-like Wolfram offered a fine study not only in verbal response but also in wounded pride. Günther Groissböck was on considerably better form as the Landgrave than as the previous night’s King Marke. Other noteworthy performances out included Siyabonga Maqungo’s sweet-toned Walther von der Vogelweide and Olafur Sigurdarson’s charismatic Biterolf.
Eberhard Friedrich drew out variegated performances from the Bayreuth Festival Chorus, words and meaning as intelligible as those of any soloist. And whilst I was unconvinced by some gear changes in Nathalie Stutzmann’s conducting – at the end of the first act in particular – and there remained a good few peculiar orchestral balances, possibly born of a desire to highlight Wagner’s debt to grand opéra, considerable progress had been made from last year. Ensemble was not perfect, but it was a good deal stronger than it had been in the first of the three productions I saw and heard this year. The sum of what, I think, we may in the best sense call this ‘show’ proved greater and deeper than its estimable parts. Here is to hopes for 2026.
Mark Berry