selenak

Yesterday's Tannhäuser: about the production, the less said the better. If I tell you the action was transferred to a brewery-plus-biogas-factory, which, as someone earnestly told me during the break, was supposed to symbolize the circle of life, you can imagine what it was like. Also the singers were merely okay, for Bayreuth, I mean (meaning they were good, just not extraordinary), except for the Elisabeth, Camilla Nylund, who was excellent. The one moment of tastelessness beyond belief involved her character, unfortunately: she entered a (bio-)gas chamber in the third act. If there is one stage in all of Germany where you really should think a thousand times before changing an opera's action so that one character dies by gas, it's in Bayreuth with its Uncle-Wolf-aka-Hitler-best-friend-of-the-house history, but noooooo..... The unthinking director was called Sebastian Baumgarten, in case you want to avoid him.

On the bright side: you can't kill the music. There is always that. And I acquired two dvds with the one innovation by Katharina Wagner that was met by general approval since she took over - a Wagner production specifically for children each year. Last year's was Tannhäuser, so I bought that in the hope it won't be set in a brewery and there will be no suicide-by-bio gas, and this year's, already out on dvd, is a short version of the Ring. I'm really curious how the last one works out, because on the one hand, splendid material for a fantasy story, on the other, various crucial plot elements that can't really be cut out involve sex (Alberich's motivation early in Rheingold, the yay incest! twins from Die Walküre), plus I'm not sure Wotan's Schopenhauer-inspired ponderings are comprehensible. Though I presume they won't make the cut. Well, we'll see.

Waiting for the trumpets to call us inside: