The Bayreuth Festival 2023 - Richard Wagner - Tannhäuser (Critic)

Critic - Tannhäuser and the Minnesängers’ Contest at Wartburg That’s how director’s theater goes! by Antonia Goldhammer Tobias Kratzer shows with his “Tannhäuser“ also in its fourth year that director’s theater very well suits the Bayreuth audience - if it is well done. Director’s theater doesn’t work with the Bayreuth audience. It just has to be well done. And that is what Tobias Kratzer’s Tannhäuser is. Now in its fourth year, he tells in a lusty, anarchic and colorful way the drama of a clown and opera singer who breaks with the Venusberg - here a radical performance collective that takes Wagner’s writing “the art and the revolution“ literally, and that stands in contrast to Wagner’s other side, the socially conformist Bayreuth Festival Theater - the Wartburg to which the clowns try in vain to return. Wagner’s own contradictoriness Here, what is probably also attempted in Valentin Schwarz’s “Ring“ works: Here, Wagner’s own contradictoriness is brought to light, here, with Venus’ companions Oskar and Gateau Chocolat, new characters are established and a new story is told, but they fit perfectly into Wagner’s plot. And here current, social questions are raised. And why doesn’t that work here and in the “Ring,“ for example? Because the direction here follows through ideas and leitmotifs stringently and logically and develops the interpretation from Wagner’s work and its programmatic. And because the directing team takes its task very seriously, but not too much you can indulge, think, laugh and cry. Ovation for conductor Nathalie Stutzmann And conductor Natalie Stutzmann leaves plenty of room for this. She does not rely on effect, not on mowing down the audience with the orchestra sound. There is no trace of ego, she lets the work speak - and the audience celebrates this with a standing ovation. I have never experienced that at a Graben debut. Stutzmann carries the singers on her hands and they noticeably enjoy it. There is Ekatarina Gubanova in her third year as the powerful-voiced and furious Venus, who as always shows how much fun she also has “playing without a ball“ when in the 2nd act, in which Venus has nothing to sing, she wildly storms the Festspielhaus with her companions to get Tannhäuser back. Promising: Siyabonga Maqungo Her antagonist Elisabeth this year is sung by Elisabeth Teige and one absolutely takes her trauma and despair. For me she has too much tremolo - but that is a matter of taste. The Wartburg singers around Markus Eiche as Wolfram and Günther Groissböck as Landgrave are really great, and Siyabonga Maqungo as Walther von der Vogelweide is a real discovery. Stand-in Klaus Florian Vogt convinces And then, of course, there is Tannhäuser: Klaus Florian Vogt, who stood in for Stephen Gould. No easy task, after all, Gould put his stamp on the role of the tragic clown in this production right from the start. But Vogt surprises with intense acting. And: those who have heard him as the radiant Stolzing or Lohengrin get to know a completely new facet of him here: striking, passionately rough and impetuous. He shapes his Rome narrative in a shattering way and thus introduces the tragic end, in which it becomes clear with Elisabeth’s suicide that it is neither romantic nor redemptive when a person worries himself to death. Towards the sunset with the Venusmobile For the final chorus, video artist Manuel Braun virtuously shows redemption as utopia on the screen: Tannhäuser and Elisabeth have left radicality behind and met in the middle, both wear a little clown make-up on their faces and happily ride off into the sunset on the Venusmobile. Never has the tragedy of the Tannhäuser figure been more evident: he has not succeeded in building a bridge between the extremes of Venusberg and Wartburg, between radical free and radical established art. The team around Tobias Kratzer, however, succeeds in doing just that. This is how director’s theater works! Pictures by Enrico Nawrath