A replicated proscenium with red and gold Royal Opera House curtains forms the entrance to the erotic world of the Venusberg in Tim Albery’s revived production of Tannhäuser. On a chair placed to allow a glimpse of these hedonistic delights sits a succession of men formally attired as for the opera. All of us – patrons, ushers, critics – are potential clients. There’s a first time for everything. Except that in this production the surfeit of sensuality that the disenchanted knight Tannhäuser longs to escape from is rarely in evidence.
Certainly, for my money, Jasmin Vardimon’s writhing-limbed choreography offers a genuinely titillating Bacchanale – though these things are admittedly subjective. But the following scene for Venus and Tannhäuser, even in the Paris version which gives us the more voluptuous fleshing out of the love goddess that Wagner produced in the wake of Tristan und Isolde, is so lacking in passion that one can all too readily empathise with Tannhäuser’s ennui. This was only partly because Stefan Vinke had to be replaced at a few hours’ notice by Norbert Ernst, singing from the side while Vinke walked the part. All due credit to Ernst in this most taxing of roles, but he’s not the most exciting of tenors.
