In Wagner's opera, Tannhäuser has forsaken his virginal love, the Lady Elisabeth, and succumbed to the sensual temptations of the goddess Venus. The overture encapsulates the opera’s push-me-pull-you tension between sensuality and salvation.
Richard Wagner by Cäsar Willich Photo: Public Domain
The opera’s first act opens with Tannhäuser in Venus’ palace of hedonistic pleasure, shamefully enjoying his role as Venus’ sexual slave. Once satisfied, however, Tannhäuser remembers Elisabeth and, invoking the name of the Virgin Mary, is magically transported back to Elisabeth, who still loves him despite his long (and as-yet unexplained) absence from court. When called upon to sing a love song at court during a minstrel’s singing competition, Tannhäuser sings not a song of chaste romance but a song of sex and desire. The horrified court realises his absence was due to his debauched idyll in Venus’ palace, as the consort of Venus; he is, therefore, the epitome of sin. Spiritual redemption is impossible for Tannhäuser – he is irreversibly damned.
Or, is he? In a turn of fortune, Elisabeth intercedes. She prays to God and the Virgin Mary that Tannhäuser’s soul be saved, offering herself up instead. At its conclusion, Elisabeth dies for his sins, while in her death Tannhäuser loses the purest love he has ever known.
Recorded 6 September 2019, Michael Fowler Centre, Wellington by RNZ Concert
Producer: David McCaw
Engineer: Darryl Stack
