With no fully staged, large-scale opera production at this year’s Edinburgh International festival, this concert performance of Wagner’s Tannhäuser had been eagerly anticipated. Its fantastical and elaborate plot make it a tricky work to bring coherence to in a semi-staging, but Sir Donald Runnicles and Deutsche Oper didn’t disappoint.
The young knight Tannhäuser is torn between the carnal allure of the goddess Venus and his longing for the pious Elisabeth. After disgracing himself by singing in praise of Venus at a song contest, he is exiled to Rome to plead for absolution. On his return, he tells how he was rejected by the pope, who informed him that he would only be forgiven when green leaves grow from the papal staff. Heartbroken, he finds his beloved Elisabeth has died praying for his salvation, only to learn from a group of pilgrims that the pope’s crosier has, in fact, sprouted leaves. Wagner went to great lengths to stress that Tannhäuser was not a morality tale, and the opera’s imperatives are notoriously ambiguous.
