Wagner Society in NSW Inc
Tannhauser Background Material - Roger Cruickshank 26 August 2007
Here are some background notes which became a talk on Tannhauser given to the Society on July 15 2007. The extracts from Mein Leben are taken from the Project Gutenberg EBook of My Life, Volume I, by Richard Wagner.
The historical Tannhauser lived from around 1200 to 1270 and composed songs, sixteen of whose lyrics have survived. Once wealthy, he squandered his fortune on “fair women, good wine, dainty meat, and baths twice a week” (in the words of a poem attributed to him) and supposedly ended his life writing penitent poetry regretting his former wasteful, sinful lifestyle. The historical Wolfram von Eschenbach lived from around 1170 to 1220, and is ranked among the great German medieval poets chiefly for his epic poem Parzival . Among von Eschenbach's surviving works are seven lyric poems, for which the music has been lost, and an unfinished epic, Titurel .
In Mein Leben , Wagner says that he read “a pamphlet on the Venusberg, which accidentally fell into my hands” and “brought Tannhauser , if only by a passing hint, into touch with The Minstrel's War on the Wartburg. ” These are the two legends from which Wagner forged the single story of his opera. Wagner found the original text of the Wartburg song contest tale in an annual report of the proceedings of the Konigsberg German Society, which included “in the same copy a critical study, Lohengrin, which gave in full detail the main contents of that widespread epic.”
In the legend of Tannhauser used in Act 1 and the final scene of Act 3, Tannhauser tires of the continual delights of the Venusberg and decides to return to the world. Venus tries to prevent him, and Tannhauser cries out that he desires no woman other than the one he is now thinking of, upon which he calls to the Virgin Mary. At the mention of this holy name, he suddenly finds himself back in the world. Determined to begin a new life, Tannhauser makes a pilgrimage to Rome to ask forgiveness for his sins but the shocked Pope (usually identified as Urban IV, who served as Pope between 1261 and 1264) says that his wooden staff will burst into bloom before Christ will forgive a sinner like Tannhauser. Disillusioned, Tannhauser returns to the Venusberg where in the arms of Venus he awaits the Last Judgement. The Pope's staff bursts into bloom and he sends messengers to find Tannhauser, but the poet has disappeared and the old song tells us that it is the Pope who is damned. This is clearly not the happy and redemptive ending with two corpses which Wagner gives us.
In the tale of the song contest at the Wartburg used in Act 2, Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia, famous for his patronage of the arts, hosted a great tournament of song. Many Minnesingers were present, and a contest developed between six of them. Five Minnesingers sang the praises of Landgrave Hermann, but Heinrich von Ofterdingen praised his master Duke Leopold instead. Tempers rose, and it was agreed that the loser of the contest would be put to death. Heinrich von Ofterdingen, who was outnumbered and clearly not very bright, was judged the loser, whereupon he asked Sophie, the Landgrave's wife, for protection. She threw her mantle over him, preventing anyone from harming him. Sophie called for the contest to be repeated in a year's time, and summoned the Hungarian sorcerer Klingsor to judge between the singers, and anyone who argued against his decision would be killed. During this year, Heinrich von Ofterdingen gained Klingsor's support, and the magician used his powers to help the Minnesinger. But despite Klingsor's sorcery, Wolfram von Eschenbach won the contest by singing pious songs about God's grace, leading to the perplexing conclusion that even with a crooked judge on your side, you may not win.
Klingsor also prophesies the birth of Saint Elizabeth, who is to be the daughter-in-law of Landgrave Hermann. Tragically widowed at 20, Elizabeth was noted for her extreme piety, purity, and her devotion to the poor and the sick. Wagner fused the figure of Sophie, the Landgrave's wife who shielded Heinrich von Ofterdingen from danger, with the character of Saint Elizabeth, so that in Tannhauser , Elisabeth is Landgrave Hermann's niece, the object of Tannhauser's chaste affection and of Wolfram's unrequited love.
Wagner tells us in Mein Leben how the opera got its name, which explains why Tannhauser is called “Heinrich” (for “Heinrich von Ofterdingen”?) throughout the opera and is never called “Tannhauser”.
“The only thing that Meser was absolutely opposed to was the title of my new opera, which I had just named “Der Venusberg”; he maintained that, as I did not mix with the public, I had no idea what horrible jokes were made about this title. He said the students and professors of the medical school in Dresden would be the first to make fun of it, as they had a predilection for that kind of obscene joke. I was sufficiently disgusted by these details to consent to the change. To the name of my hero, Tannhauser, I added the name of the subject of the legend which, although originally not belonging to the Tannhauser myth, was thus associated with it by me …
“Tannhauser und der Sangerkrieg auf Wartburg” (Tannhauser and the Song Contest at the Wartburg) should henceforth be its title, and to give the work a mediaeval appearance I had the words specially printed in Gothic characters upon the piano arrangement, and in this way introduced the work to the public.”
Although Wagner had completed the first act of Tannhauser in January 1844 and the second by October of that year, the first performance was not until 20 October 1845, in Dresden . Wagner writes in Mein Leben :
“In the beginning of October we had so far progressed with our rehearsals that nothing stood in the way of an immediate production of Tannhauser save the scenery, which was not yet complete. A few only of the scenes ordered from Paris had arrived, and even these had come very late. The Wartburg Valley was beautifully effective and perfect in every detail. The inner part of the Venusberg, however, gave me much anxiety: the painter had not understood me; he had painted clusters of trees and statues, which reminded one of Versailles, and had placed them in a wild cave; he had evidently not known how to combine the weird with the alluring. I had to insist on extensive alterations, and chiefly on the painting out of the shrubs and statues, all of which required time. The grotto had to lie half hidden in a rosy cloud, through which the Wartburg Valley had to loom in the distance; this was to be done in strict obedience to my own ideas.
“The greatest misfortune, however, was to befall me in the shape of the tardy delivery of the scenery for the Hall of Song. This was due to great negligence on the part of the Paris artists; and we waited and waited until every detail of the opera had been studied and studied again ad nauseam . Daily I went to the railway station and examined all the packages and boxes that had arrived, but there was no Hall of Song. At last I allowed myself to be persuaded not to postpone the first performance any longer, and I decided to use the Hall of Karl the Great out of Oberon , originally suggested to me by Luttichau, instead of the real thing. Considering the importance I attached to practical effect, this entailed a great sacrifice of my personal feelings. And true enough, when the curtain rose for the second act, the reappearance of this throne-room, which the public had seen so often, added considerably to the general disappointment of the audience, who had anticipated astonishing surprises in this opera.”
The opening night was a disaster.
“With regard to the production itself the conclusions I drew from it were as follows: the real faults in the work, which I have already mentioned incidentally, lay in the sketchy and clumsy portrayal of the part of Venus, and consequently of the whole of the introductory scene of the first act. In consequence of this defect the drama never even rose to the level of genuine warmth, still less did it attain to the heights of passion which, according to the poetic conception of the part, should so strongly work upon the feelings of the audience as to prepare them for the inevitable catastrophe in which the scene culminates, and thus lead up to the tragic denouement. This great scene was a complete failure, in spite of the fact that it was entrusted to so great an actress as Schröder-Devrient, and a singer so unusually gifted as Tichatschek. The genius of Devrient might yet have struck the right note of passion in the scene had she not chanced to be acting with a singer incapable of all dramatic seriousness, and whose natural gifts only fitted him for joyous or declamatory accents, and who was totally incapable of expressing pain and suffering. It was not until Wolfram's touching song and the closing scene of this act were reached that the audience showed any signs of emotion. Tichatschek wrought such a tremendous effect in the concluding phrase by the jubilant music of his voice that, as I was afterwards informed, the end of this first act left the audience in a great state of enthusiasm.”
“That very evening I decided to remedy the defects of the first night before the second performance.”
“Every day that elapsed between the first and second performance left the result of the former more and more problematic, until at last it appeared to be a generally acknowledged failure. While the public as a whole expressed angry astonishment that, after the approval they had shown of my Rienzi , I had paid no attention to their taste in writing my new work, there were many kind and judicious friends who were utterly perplexed at its inefficiency, the principal parts of which they had been unable to understand, or thought were imperfectly sketched and finished. The critics, with unconcealed joy, attacked it as ravens attack carrion thrown out to them.”
And so Wagner's intermittent and lifelong rewriting of Tannhauser began. In March 1861, Wagner once again put his Tannhauser before an audience, this time in Paris , and this time in French. The results were no better than the premier in Dresden , although for different reasons.
The Paris Version contains significant changes, not least the translation of the text into French (although most performances of the Paris Version today use a German libretto .) Most famously, the opening scene was doubled in length, in part by significantly expanding the opening ballet which was in the first act and not, as the rules of French Grand Opera required, in the third. A solo for Walther was removed from Act 2, the orchestral introduction to Act 3 was shortened, and the end of the opera was remodelled to include Venus on stage, where in the Dresden version the audience only heard the Venus motif . Wagner thought that prior to this change, audiences were confused about what was happening onstage.
Most commentators assert that the misplaced ballet in Act 1 caused the disruption to the Paris performances, although it may be that French antipathy for the Austrian Princess Metternich was also a factor, the Emperor (Napoleon III) having given orders for a performance of Tannhauser at the request of Princess Metternich, whom Wagner called “the good fairy of the whole enterprise”.
In “Mein Leben”, Wagner wrote of the second performance, which took place on 18 March 1861, that:
“… the first act promised well. The overture was loudly applauded without a note of opposition. Mme. Tedesco, who had eventually been completely won over to her part of Venus by a wig powdered with gold dust, called out triumphantly to me in the manager's box, when the 'septuor' of the finale of the first act was again vigorously applauded, that everything was now all right and that we had won the victory. But when shrill whistling was suddenly heard in the second act, Royer the manager turned to me with an air of complete resignation and said, 'Ce sont les Jockeys; nous sommes perdus.' Apparently at the bidding of the Emperor, extensive negotiations had been entered into with these members of the Jockey Club as to the fate of my opera. They had been requested to allow three performances to take place, after which they had been promised that it should be so curtailed as to admit of its presentation only as a curtain-raiser to introduce a ballet which was to follow.
“After the performance Bülow broke out into sobs as he embraced Minna, who had not been spared the insults of those next to her when they recognised her as the wife of the composer. Our trusty servant Therese, a Swabian girl, had been sneered at by a crazy hooligan, but when she realised that he understood German, she succeeded in quieting him for a time by calling him Schweinhund at the top of her voice.
“Hearing that in spite of everything a third performance was fixed, I was confronted with only two possible solutions of the difficulty. One was, to try once more to withdraw my score; the other, to demand that my opera should be given on a Sunday, that is to say, on a non-subscriber's day. I assumed that such a performance could not be regarded by the usual ticket-holders as a provocation, for they were quite accustomed on such days to surrender their boxes to any of the general public who chanced to come and buy them.”
Wagner chose to stay at home and avoid this third and final performance.
“Princess Metternich had remained at home, as she had already had to endure the coarse insults and ridicule of our opponents at the first two performances.
“She indicated the height to which this fury had risen by mentioning some of her best friends, with whom she had engaged in so virulent a controversy that she had ended by saying: 'Away with your free Fran ce ! In Vienna , where at least there is a genuine aristocracy, it would be unthinkable for a Prince Liechtenstein or Schwarzenberg to scream from his box for a ballet in Fidelio .' I believe she also spoke to the Emperor in the same strain, so that he seriously debated whether by police intervention some check could not be put upon the unmannerly conduct of these gentlemen, most of whom, unfortunately, belonged to the Imperial Household.”
It is easy to see why, after two failed premiers, Wagner might comment years later, as recorded in Cosima's diaries, that he stilled owed the world a Tannhauser !
Footnotes:
Both Fidelio and Madama Butterfly had disastrous premieres which resulted in the works being substantially rewritten, and they are both generally staged today in their revised versions. While the case of Tannhauser is complicated by the fact of two failed premiers, about which Lady Bracknell would have had something to say, a “Dresden Version” based on the failed 1845 production remains in the repertoire and is regularly performed and recorded, in addition to the substantially rewritten “Paris Version”, now given in German, which is broadly the same as the work performed in Paris in 1861. It seems almost anti-Wagnerian to continue to perform the “Dresden Version”, given Wagner's clearly-expressed dissatisfaction with it, and efforts to which he went to improve its dramatic realisation.
Tannhauser took longer than some other Wagner works to become the darling of regietheatre, but it is now regularly re-interpreted, and not always badly. I was delighted to read a review in the May/June 2007 edition of “Opera Now” by Fran cis Muzzu of a new production of Tannhauser by Vera Nemirova at Oper Fran kfurt, where Wolfram strangles Elizabeth during his Act 3 aria. This is not Wolfram's pre-sentiment of Elizabeth 's death, as usually shown in other productions, but a description of the journey of Elizabeth 's soul past Venus' planet as Wolfram kills her. I hope to see Nemirova's production if it is restaged!
This Page was last updated on:
05-Oct-2007
© Wagner Society in NSW Inc 2007 |