Tannhäuser

On January 23, 1883, Cosima Wagner wrote in her diary that her husband believed he still owed Tannhäuser to the world. Wagner completed the first version of the opera in 1845 during his tenure as kapellmeister at the royal court of Dresden. No other work in his oeuvre would receive as much constant attention. It seems that Wagner, who considered Tannhäuser a watershed work in his output, was never satisfied with any single version of it.

Tannhäuser, the medieval legend of the knight from Thannhausen, was premièred in Dresden in October 1845. Wagner began the process of revising the work immediately. Dresden audiences saw performances of at least three different incarnations of the opera, and the version of the score Wagner published in 1860 was yet again different. Wagner subjected Tannhäuser to further emendations, including the translation of the libretto into French, for each of the three performances of the work at the Paris Opéra in 1861, and the version first performed in Vienna in 1875 was of a still different score. The early Parisian performances of Tannhäuser have lived in infamy and illustrate the circumstances in which Wagner made the most significant changes to the opera. The Jockey Club had demanded, in keeping with French tradition, that the opera contain a ballet in Act Three. Wagner extended the Venusberg scene at the opening of the opera to include a ballet. Objecting to the early placement of the ballet, the Jockey Club organized a clangorous display of disapproval. Performances of Tannhäuser today generally draw on either the "Dresden" or the "Paris" version.

The orchestra introduces the drama's most important themes in the Tannhäuser prelude. Act One begins at the Venusberg, chromatic swirls and robust orchestration forming the musical backdrop for frolicking fauna at the grotto of the love goddess. The master singer Tannhäuser sings three appeals for Venus to release him to the world beyond her mountain, each appeal one semitone higher than the one preceding, revealing Tannhäuser's heightening intensity. In the valley before the Wartburg resound a shepherd's song and a chorus of older pilgrims making their way to Rome. Wagner constructs the chorus of the pious pilgrims in a four-part chorale setting reminiscent of the Lutheran chorales of J.S. Bach. In the Act Two song contest, Wolfram, Tannhäuser, and Biterolf sing artful songs on the nature of love. Having returned unsuccessfully from his pilgrimage to Rome, Tannhäuser sings to Wolfram of his experiences there, his musical manner alternating between willful expanses in his previous songful vein and recitative utterances. The chromatic Venusberg music returns when Tannhäuser realizes that he has no choice but to live out his destiny of damnation in the service of Venus herself. On learning that Elisabeth has died so that his own sins may be forgiven, Tannhäuser hears the devoutly diatonic music of Elisabeth's funeral procession, which, having purified the Venusberg music of its excessive chromaticism, invites the final triumphal statement of the theme from the pilgrims' chorus as the opera draws to a close.