Tannhäuser

Richard Wagner always considered his Tannhäuser an incurable wound; a painful portrait of both man and artist. As he wrote to Louis II, seeing his work once again twenty years after its creation, he could not help crying, blinded by the image of his old wounds – old but forever open

. These wounds were even more irreparable than those Amfortas was to lament in the composer’s future Parsifal
. And certainly, in 1845, at the time Wagner composed Tannhäuser, the composer was disillusioned with a life that had brought none of his longed-for rewards. His existence had been nothing but a series of exiles, from Magdeburg to Paris and even Riga. Wagner had entered into an unhappy marriage and, deprived of love, never ceased to dream sorrowfully of it. Success had not come to him, despite the concessions he granted the public. When he composed Tannhäuser, Wagner created the clearest and most consummate of self-portraits. At the same time it was his least complete work – unachievable and romantic in the strongest sense of the term.

Alongside Christopher Ventris, Nina Stemme makes her long-awaited debut at the Opera. Sophie Koch sings her first Venus and Stéphane Degout his first Wolfram.