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- [00:16]
Pat Wright
Welcome to another edition of Opera for Everyone. I'm your host, Pat Wright, and I have two co hosts with me today. Kathleen Vanderwil.
- [00:25]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Lovely to be with you, Patrick.
- [00:27]
Pat Wright
And Grant. Grant is back with us again.
- [00:30]
Grant
Happy to be here.
- [00:31]
Pat Wright
Thrilled to have you here. We have a Richard Wagner opera for this particular show, and it's not from his earliest, like when we did Das Liebeswerbot. You and I did that, Kathleen. That was episode 110. But this is the opera that he did just after the Flying Dutchman, both of which pretty. Premiered in Dresden.
- [00:55]
Kathleen Vanderwil
This is Tannhauser.
- [00:58]
Grant
Tannhauser.
- [00:59]
Pat Wright
Wait, Grant, explain yourself.
- [01:01]
Grant
Of course, Tannhauser is correct for those of you who speak German, but for those of you who have been following opera for him, everyone, since our very earliest days. The second existing recorded opera for everyone was about this play and throughout it, consistently, I pronounced it Tannhauser. Now, you may be wondering, why did you do that? And the short answer is, that's how it gets pronounced in Blade Runner. But importantly, the truth is, for those of us unused to the German umlaut, the pronunciation looks like it should be Tannhauser, even though the German is Tannhauser. Luckily for us, he's never actually referred to by that name in the entire script. And so, as a result, we can just call him Heinrich from now on.
- [01:46]
Pat Wright
Is that convenient? Yes. Although we may still call him Tannhauser. All right. This is one of Wagner's romantic operas, very romantic music.
- [02:00]
Grant
Is this capital R romantic or lowercase r romantic?
- [02:04]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Both.
- [02:06]
Pat Wright
Before we get into the story, let's take a moment to listen to a little bit of this soaring overture to this piece of music. Tannhauser, when it's played, starts with a lot of instrumental music. It's Wagner's longest overture, and we'll explain this later, but sometimes there is a ballet which follows the overture, which gives you close to half an hour of pure instrumental music before any of the characters sing. Sing. We do not have a ballet in our version, but we're going to listen right now to just a little bit of this lush overture.
- [05:14]
Unnamed Speaker
Sa.
- [08:51]
Pat Wright
That was some of the overture to Richard Wagner's Tannhauser. It's just beautiful music.
- [08:57]
Grant
There's a reason I always recommend Wagner to people who are interested in opera but intimidated by it. And it's that the beauty of the music is palpable and comprehensible to us in a way that some things are less accessible. And the truth is that for a variety of reasons, including just the tremendous influence that Wagner's music has had on contemporary music, particularly in the cinema. It is in many ways recognizable and something that we can grasp onto more easily than some other forms of opera music.
- [09:33]
Pat Wright
Yes, that's true. At some point, in every show that we do or we talk about Wagner, we need to acknowledge the complexities, the contradictions and the difficulties of Wagner, the man, along with the blinding talent of Wagner, the composer and man of the theater. And acknowledging that he wrote a lot about music, about his theories of music. He wrote all his own librettos, by the way. But he was a writer as well as a composer of music. And some of the things that he wrote are horrifying. They are anti Semitic in the extreme. He was very much a German nationalist, not just to the point of being patriotic about his homeland, but to the point of deciding who was a proper German and who wasn't and who was a good and worthwhile person. We don't need to dwell on that, but we do need to acknowledge it.
- [10:31]
Grant
And relevant to the content of this play in particular, he had a profoundly, I think, generously, we could call it complicated love life. And what I say sometimes of Wagner is he just changed his mind on everything. And to some extent, this speaks to his massive artistic imagination, but it also means that you can find him on every side of every political issue, every personal issue, every everything else, musical issues. I mean, he changes his mind at various points about what he thinks about opera as a form itself. And he had a great and expansive mind, but that doesn't mean he was a good or a nice person, and certainly not intellectually consistent or reliable person.
- [11:21]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes. And he also always seemed like somebody who felt like he had to experience everything. And he had the sort of permanent fomo, permanent fear of missing out on this love affair or this particular story, et cetera, et cetera, which, yes, is maybe a more succinct way of saying what you said. He just. He couldn't not experience everything.
- [11:43]
Grant
Yes. Yeah, there's a little bit of. I mean, Tony Soprano is who comes to mind.
- [11:47]
Pat Wright
Right.
- [11:47]
Grant
But like this person who is unable to not just reach and grasp everything.
- [11:54]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And you see that in this opera that we're going to be talking about, too. This is an opera about a Wagnerian figure in the sense that he is an artist, he is a songwriter, he is in some way outside of the bounds of regular human society and morality because of that. And I think there is, not to get too direct about it, but there's. There's some definite autobiographical vibes going on there.
- [12:23]
Grant
Yes.
- [12:24]
Pat Wright
Well, let's talk a little bit about the source material for Tannhauser. It is Wagner going and part of what he's going to do for the rest of his career, really look at German culture, German heritage, and look at it from the medieval period as being a pure and true and inspirational time period, because after all, this opera is set in the medieval period, in the early 13th century.
- [12:52]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes. And like almost every romantic, anything that is said in the quote unquote medieval period, it is a highly fake medieval. It's a mythologized medieval. It's ladies in pointy hats type of medieval, I would say. But that, of course, just lends another layer of sort of dream logic on top of this story as well.
- [13:14]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [13:14]
Grant
I mean, there's a number of historical and or legendary people who appear in this Tannhauser. Heinrich is a real historical person, a poet from roughly this time period. Elizabeth, the love interest, is a real historical person. Wolfram is a real historical poet. And the Pope, who plays a role in this is also a, of course, historical figure as well. And yet the timelines don't line up. Various legends have been smushed together and you get something that is, I think, in many ways, more than the sum of its parts, because he is taking these different things and synthesizing them together into something new.
- [13:56]
Pat Wright
Yeah. This story of the legend of Tannhauser was known to Germans. And there's a song contest for anyone who's listened to our episode 127 where Gerald and I spoke about Die Meister singer von Nuremberg, which was from later in Wagner's career. But this idea that these singing competitions are of such great importance in these stories, it's powerful. And it's also clearly something that Wagner cared about and saw as part of the German culture.
- [14:33]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Wagner, as we said, was of multiple minds about things. And as I believe Grant mentioned earlier, he revised this many times and even at his death didn't consider it to be finished, really. But there are two main versions. There's the Dresden version, where it was originally debuted, and then there's the Paris version, which is Wagner's one and only true attempt to appease the French, after which he quit the field entirely.
- [15:01]
Pat Wright
He tried really hard for a while to break into French opera, because that was sort of a pinnacle of opera, but he was just never going to satisfy the French tastes. And that's part of what I believe threw him back into total Germanness. The fact that he wasn't going to be successful in London or in Paris. But just for clarification, there are these two versions that we today call the Dresden version and the Paris version. Interestingly enough, the Dresden version is not the version that premiered in Dresden in 1845. It is the compilation of the first bunch or the first tranche of revisions that Wagner made over a decade of performances. It was a popular opera right from the beginning. The music was sumptuous, the story was appealing to people. But that's the Dresden version premiering in 1845. And then the version that we know is the Dresden version today, for instance, if you go to see it and it says it's the Dresden version, it includes a lot of the changes he made in the first decade, or a little bit more than a decade. And the Paris version, it's a fascinating story. He is becoming more popular as this Tannhauser is playing around. And he is ultimately invited to perform in Paris by Emperor Napoleon iii. And it's partly facilitated by the wife of the Austrian ambassador, A. Metternich. And he says, great, I'm ready for the big time here. I mean, he was happy Ish with his position in Dresden, but he wanted more.
- [16:43]
Kathleen Vanderwil
My understanding too is he was exiled from Germany during this time for a little bit. For his political views too.
- [16:48]
Pat Wright
That is correct.
- [16:49]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Paris was quite a convenient place to.
- [16:51]
Pat Wright
Yeah, and he was Vienna for some of. I mean, Wagner gets around. He's either running away from creditors or he's gotten in trouble with the authorities. Yeah, it's just he moves around. But this Paris version is hysterical because he has to conform to Parisian grand opera expectations. And we've said many times on opera for everyone, if you're going to have an opera in Paris, gotta have a ballet. Gotta have a ballet. And he complied. He complied with the letter of that rule, but not the spirit, because the ballet was supposed to be in the beginning of the second act. Because we all need to have a nice dinner.
- [17:33]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes, I was. I was foolish enough to ask why it had to be there, why the French nobleman wanted to see the ballet but not the first act of the opera. And of course, I was told, quite obviously, well, there's so many pretty girls in the ballet, we can't miss that part. So, yes, the French remain a little bit of exactly what we think they are in this story.
- [18:01]
Pat Wright
Well, and there was more than that that ruffled the feathers. He had to withdraw it after three performances. It wasn't only that he messed up the whole convention of the ballet, which he. By the way, the ballet, it's kind of cool when you do see it performed because it's a bacchanal. It's in the very first scene, which we haven't even talked about yet, but we will momentarily. It's in the very first scene. It's a bacchanal. It's just debauchery, bodies. It's wonderful. It's a wonderful piece. But the other problem was, is that there were a lot of people who just didn't like him, and also people who didn't like the wife of the Austrian ambassador. And these people caused an enormous ruckus in the theatre, like incomprehensible to modern audiences. The kind of noise, distraction, disturbance they caused in the opera house during the performance. And Wagner had had enough and he withdrew it after the three performances.
- [19:02]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes. Apparently they passed out whistles so that people could whistle throughout. That's real commitment to the pit.
- [19:12]
Pat Wright
Yeah, it worked. It absolutely worked. So let's talk about this first scene of the first act.
- [19:20]
Kathleen Vanderwil
We open on Venus's domain, the goddess of love, known here as Venusburg. And Grant, I don't know. Would you like to tell us a little bit about what Venusburg is before we move forward?
- [19:33]
Grant
Venusburg is this sort of synthesis of the Arthurian legend, kind of fae, otherworld, and also the idea of something that is not quite infernal in the sense of hellish, but something that speaks to a kind of perdition. It is certainly reminiscent of the domain of Circe in the Odyssey. It's reminiscent of other things, the land of the lotus eaters, the sort of place where you are in a kind of pleasure, but it's the pleasure of haziness, almost the condition of addiction, where you are happy but in this superficial way that leads to a certain kind of emptiness. And so here it is, all the sensual pleasures of the flesh. Venus, Aphrodite, the goddess of love, here represented as this embodiment of personal physical desire and satisfaction. And it is a place simultaneously of great apparent joy, but an emptiness and a sadness underneath.
- [20:49]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes, it reminded me a little bit of Odysseus saying that he wants to be lashed to the mass so that he can hear the siren song. But in this case, our hero Tannhuser, he doesn't have that tether, he's just floating in it. And it opens with this, as Pat mentioned, this orgiastic ballet of the various denizens of Venusburg. And we see Venus and Tannhauser together and everything seems lush, beautiful, orgiastic. But we know, and very soon there will be sort of a. There's a little fly in the ointment. He has some doubts about this world.
- [21:30]
Pat Wright
Yeah. And it's interesting that it might be depicted differently by different directors on the stage. But as is explained in the libretto, this is a subterranean area. It's confined. It's a little bit dark, and it is full of all these pleasures. But it's going to get all of the things you said, Grant, plus the fact that it's not outside in the sunshine. It all gets to Tannhauser so that we see this sensual scene, and pretty quickly we hear Tannhauser saying, hey, it's been great, Venus. You've been wonderful. Nice girl, but I gotta get back to real life.
- [22:09]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Somehow I don't think she takes that well.
- [22:12]
Pat Wright
No, she doesn't take it well. And she turns on the charm that only the goddess of love can turn on. She reseduces him repeatedly in this first encounter.
- [22:25]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes. And it's clear from one of the pieces we're going to listen to that this has been very inspirational for him as a singer and as a composer. He makes it very clear that he's not able to really compose just for the sake of music. It has to be towards something. It has to be in worship of something, of someone. And in this case, we'll learn a little bit about his background and how he came to be here. But at this point, he has decided and been there for, I think, about a year. Is our understanding that this is his muse. This is the reason that he sings and he sings these beautiful odes to Venus and two sensual, intimate love.
- [23:10]
Pat Wright
So let's get a little taste of what he sings to her. And I will confess that after all the music that we've heard up to now, this feels more like a folk tune to me, something that a man could devise and sing on his lyre, which is what he is typically depicted as using to accompany him as he sings.
- [24:53]
Unnamed Speaker
Me cannot, Samaritan.
- [25:18]
Pat Wright
That was Tannhauser singing his ode to Venus. And he's very complimentary. He expresses appreciation and admiration for Venus. But then it turns and he says, but you've got to let me go. I can't stay here. I am human. Your level of indulgence and pleasure is something I cannot endure any longer. In fact, this is going to happen three times in this scene where she cajoles and flatters him and seduces him back again. He sings, and the song starts off as praising her, but then he turns and says, and yet I must leave.
- [26:09]
Kathleen Vanderwil
That is. I mean, three is obviously A number that we see repeated a lot as a sacred number. But it also reminds me a lot of fairy tales, original fairy tales, before Disney got a hold of them. This idea of being in fairyland, being under the hill, is a way that. That's often spoken of, which you know.
- [26:29]
Grant
Very literally in this case.
- [26:30]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, literally. That doors to fairyland were also often in places like this. And that a couple of things you could do to be released. One was to ask three times and another is to not give your real name, which I.
- [26:46]
Pat Wright
Those are not the case here though. Right.
- [26:48]
Kathleen Vanderwil
But she doesn't call him Heinrich. As far as I know, that is his true name. And this is something I noticed when we were watching a production of this, that names are very important. It is the name Elizabeth that calls him back. It is Maria, the name of the Virgin that he ends his time with, Venus by calling out to and saying, instead of you, Maria is going to be my guiding star.
- [27:11]
Pat Wright
Maria being Virgin Mary.
- [27:13]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes. And I think it is very important here that we don't have that in this scene. There is none of that sort of that name calling. But Elizabeth's name is the name of the woman that will bring him back to himself later on.
- [27:31]
Pat Wright
Yeah. So let's listen to a little bit of the end of this scene. And it's not good to get the goddess of love and angry. She is very angry at him, still trying to call him back, saying, if you leave, you're going to be unhappy. And he says, I. I'm okay to die because of my decision, but I must go. And the only way he can finally push her away and she vaporizes essentially when he invokes the name of the Virgin Mary and that ends the scene.
- [29:20]
Grant
It.
- [30:30]
Pat Wright
Well, all it took was the name of the Virgin Mary to make Venus disappear. Interesting. A contrast between two different religions and.
- [30:42]
Grant
Distinctly different attitudes towards sex and sexuality.
- [30:46]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Very much so. And we'll see this throughout the opera. The two societies that he moves between are societies of extremes. So there's the society of decadence and Greek pre Christian love. And then there is the extreme, very Catholic, very chaste society that he is from and will be going back to.
- [31:13]
Pat Wright
And that's exactly what happens at this moment. He ends up plop in the forest of his homeland right there. And the first we know of it, there's a shepherd boy who. It's a very. It's a small role, but it's very pretty with the. With the pipe that the shepherd plays. The orchestra's playing as well. But he's just Kind of coming to himself. He's like, oh, my gosh, it worked. I'm here. And he's sort of figuring it out. And other than this shepherd, the next thing he hears is this choral piece sung by pilgrims.
- [31:50]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes. And just one thing to note. The thing that the shepherd is singing is another ode to Venus. It's this ode to Huldah, who's a pagan goddess that is often conflated with Venus, the goddess of love. Hulda is the goddess in the mountain of this era. So you see, the shepherd is still singing an ode to Venus, and then the next thing he hears is an ode to Christianity and to this pilgrimage to Rome. So once again, we're caught always between these two dichotomies.
- [32:20]
Grant
And again, there's some autobiography happening here with Wagner. Wagner's religious views are a matter of endless debate for many reasons, including the fact that they seem to have been amorphous and changed repeatedly and often held very contradictory ideas in tension. He certainly had a lot of sympathy for the power and the significance of various pagan mythologies, and he had a sympathy for the redemptive power and the moral instructions in Christianity and indeed in Buddhism as well, and held all of this in tension, as we see with Heinrich Tannhauser. Heinrich is. Doesn't exactly reject Venus. He doesn't say she's bad or worthless. He says that she is wonderful and lovely and he adores her, but also that his salvation lies in another place. He doesn't ever quite let go or reject that in the way that we might expect. It's this deep conflict of who he is and what matters to him, and what system of morality holds sway over his heart.
- [33:34]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. And you see that he. He wants to have both. He wants, I think, in a way, and I think Wagner has deliberately written him as a character seeking a kind of balance between these two worlds, but also finding it impossible, because he has to choose to live in one of them. And neither of those worlds will admit of that balance. They are both in extreme. And so in this moment, where he's in the woods and he's hearing the music from both sides, he is that center, he is that person in balance. But he has to go left to right here.
- [34:10]
Pat Wright
And he begins by singing, echoing or repeating exactly the words that the pilgrims sing, he's looking for redemption. He's looking to have his sins cleansed. And you can see he's deciding, oh, I will just go with these pilgrims who are singing about how they are going to Rome to have their terrible sins forgiven. And we know none of their sins is as bad as Tannhauser. Heinrich himself. None.
- [34:43]
Unnamed Speaker
Spirit.
- [35:56]
Pat Wright
Well, that settles it. Tannhauser is convinced he's going to go to Rome and have his sincere were given.
- [36:03]
Grant
Well, that was a quick opera. Oh, wait, no. Suddenly enter some people who look at him and they're like, huh? Wait, who is. Is that. Oh. Oh, that's. That's him. Heinrich, where you been all this time?
- [36:22]
Kathleen Vanderwil
It's a good question. He's been gone for a year. Yeah. These are his. His boys. These are his buddies. Yeah.
- [36:29]
Grant
This is Team Warrior Poet. These guys are all knights who are poets. And several of them are real historical people who were knightly, courtly poets. And so it's sort of a, I think you could say, with a double meaning, getting the band back together.
- [36:49]
Kathleen Vanderwil
So, wait, hold on. Warrior poets sounds like what you would choose as your character in Dungeons and Dragons. So can you tell me a little bit about who these people actually are?
- [36:58]
Pat Wright
The Minnesingers?
- [36:59]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. What is a Minnesinger?
- [37:00]
Grant
The Minnesingers are part of this tradition of storyteller knight musicians. The French equivalent tradition is the troubadours. And in various places you get this idea of the person who is a knight, but also a bard who is living in this interesting intersection that describes what masculinity was imagined to be and look like in their culture, that it was this ability to create and this ability also to fight, this ability to be someone who is extremely knowledgeable but also extremely strong. And it's tied up with the concept of courtly love. Courtly love is a very specific and kind of idiosyncratic notion of romance, where it is simultaneously a deep and passionate love and romance, but also generally quite chaste by the standards we might imagine. And yet, even though there is a lack of physical fulfillment in a lot of courtly love, there is also a surprising amount of disregard for things like structures of authority or marriage or any of the rights and wrongs of nary romantic love. And there are variations of this throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. But these people represent one particular tradition where they are wrestling with the attempt to uphold morality as they understand it, but also to recognize the depths of human passion and the power that that gives us.
- [38:47]
Pat Wright
And just one side note, for people who are familiar with Wagner's other opera, Die Meistersinger von Nuremberg, it sounds like Minnesinger. Meistersinger. But an important difference is the Meistersingers come a little bit later. And as is very clearly displayed in that opera, those are tradesmen Singing, in this case the minnesingers, the characters who are the men who can compose and sing and win competitions, they are all nobility, they are all knights, and they are all at the topmost class of society.
- [39:23]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And grant, correct me if I'm wrong about this, but in this tradition too, a knight wouldn't necessarily be born to be a knight too. Could have been elevated through actions of nobility as well too. And so there's a sense too of almost like new nobility too, that they have worked their way into this position of nobility and now they have to maintain it through this sort of perfect behavior.
- [39:46]
Grant
It'll, it'll vary a little bit depending on what you're talking about. But in truth, our common conception of the Middle Ages as being a era without any sort of social mobility is generally false. There's a surprising amount of people graduating from one or another social class, often by way of the Church, which offered a venue for this, sometimes by way of military service and sometimes by way of artistic achievement. Of course, the, er, example of the warrior poet in the Judeo Christian tradition is David, who is a poor shepherd boy, achieves great feats of arms, makes these great and beautiful and enduring poems and songs, and is remembered for millennia to come as the iconic and ideal ruler. With all of his faults, he was someone who set the stage for this idea of someone who is creating beauty and also willing to fight to defend it.
- [40:51]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And also had his own little sex scandal as well that brought down his reputation.
- [40:57]
Grant
Yeah, I think David's moral failings and moral complexity is very much a part of the sort of story that you get with these minnesingers with the troubadours. And this is the moment in time not when the King Arthur legend is set, but the moment in time when the King Arthur legend is taking the form that we start to recognize it as. And a number of these people, including Wolfram, who's got an important role in this opera, have a part to play in the solidification of the Arthurian narrative, which similarly has some of these ideas of what do we do with power and our access to power and how do we start self gratifying in ways that are contrary to the duties of our power and the responsibilities we have towards both the creation of beauty and the protection of that which is worthy of protection.
- [41:53]
Pat Wright
Well, you've mentioned Wolfram a few times and this is the first time we see him on stage. When this group of singers that Heinrich Tannhauser had been a part of, they all show up along with the head guy The Landgrave, the man in charge of that region. They all show up and they're initially standoffish, angry at him. But it is this character Wolfram, who brokers a peace, in a way, who welcomes him back into their company. And they accept Wolfram's take on it all. And, oh, my goodness, did they do sing nicely together. They're all. They're all great singers within their society.
- [42:39]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Gotta love a men's chorus.
- [42:51]
Unnamed Speaker
Sam. Silence for Trinis. And.
- [45:51]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Be. So we've heard our lovely men's chorus. This is an extremely masculine world, as we've mentioned, as you can hear here.
- [46:24]
Pat Wright
Yeah. They're hunting and carrying dead animals along with them.
- [46:26]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yep. Not a lady's voice among them.
- [46:28]
Grant
This play does not pass the Bechdel test.
- [46:31]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes, very much.
- [46:33]
Pat Wright
Oh, no.
- [46:34]
Grant
We have literally two women in it. One is the virginal good girl and one is the, let's say, sensual bad girl. And that's it. Those are the only women who exist in this universe.
- [46:45]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And they're never in the same room together either. No, no chance of that. But it's long past time that we meet our good girl. And this is the person that Tannhauser has had in the back of his mind, I would say, but definitely not in the front of his mind. And that's part of the problem. He wants to go off to Rome. He wants to repent. He wants to go full martyr here. But Wolfram says, wait, stay for Elizabeth. And that's the first time we hear her name. As I mentioned, her name will echo in this opera. And that is what brings Tannhauser up short. He says, oh, okay, you're right, Elizabeth. I'll stay for that.
- [47:26]
Pat Wright
All those feelings come flooding back for him.
- [47:29]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes. And he immediately connects her with heaven, with angels. And we will see that he has placed her in his mind in this sort of Maria position, this Mary position, as Grant mentioned. So when he cries out the name of Mary, Mary cries out the name of Elizabeth. It's a very similar thing. He's reaching for I.
- [49:42]
Unnamed Speaker
Ein Christophe into alignment his O thou far draught Undine's unful light Curbant detergent rister Might on thine ensemble fast and fellow. Sam.
- [52:58]
Pat Wright
This is opera for everyone. And we're talking about Richard Wagner's opera Tannhauser. The music I played is not quite at the end of the first act, very close to the first act. And. And one other thing I just wanted to point out about what happens, because we have all these buddies of his, these singers, these fellow knights, but we also have the Landgrave, the man in charge, the authority figure. I think it's fascinating that one of the things he says, we had lost you and now you have returned. It feels very prodigal son to me, the way they're welcoming him back.
- [53:36]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, I agree. And there's. There's some implication, too, that he's necessary for their society to continue to be healthy and strong, that they need his voice, they need his sword, and they've kind of had to shift without him. So, yeah, absolutely. He makes them whole again.
- [53:53]
Pat Wright
Right. They're all hoping he's going to make Elizabeth whole again too, because turns out, in Tannhauser's absence, Elizabeth has been reclusive and she's been withering away. She is not well, she is not fully participating in her community, and she.
- [54:11]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Is the princess of this community. I think we should. We should be clear. She is the Landgrave's niece, I think we had said.
- [54:18]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [54:18]
Kathleen Vanderwil
He's a father figure to her, though. And she is, quite literally in the historical record, a princess. And she is the ultimate prize, the ultimate. If you were to marry her, you would become the leader of this society. Tannhauser has, in some way trifled with her affections. I would say he has made her promises of whatever married love looks like in this society. At least that's what's implied. It's a little bit difficult to parse, just because there is this other register of courtly love and how much his love for her and what he's said to her is in that register versus in a marriage register is a little bit hard to understand. And I think it's part of his own difficulties and feelings. Is she meant to be up on a pedestal as a living embodiment of a virgin priestess and princess?
- [55:11]
Pat Wright
Yes, I think so.
- [55:12]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Or is she meant to be an option for marriage and social accession? I think there's a little bit of both. And that is hard for him to deal with too.
- [55:21]
Pat Wright
Yes, but I do. Yeah. She's given her heart to him and his disappearance has just been wrecked her. She is not complete, it would seem, without his presence. So when we open in Act 2, we are indoors, we are in the great hall of the Landgrave. And the first piece is Elizabeth. She shows up, she's alone on stage and she greets the hall where she has not had any interest in showing up recently since Heinrich's departure. And she's somewhat serene, but she's working herself up into great excitement because she understands that he is back. The one that she's thought about the one that she's longing to see. He is back. And there's going to be singing, there's going to be a contest, and it's everything she's wanted.
- [56:19]
Kathleen Vanderwil
It.
- [58:02]
Unnamed Speaker
Sa.
- [58:26]
Pat Wright
You're listening to Opera, a radio show and podcast that makes opera understandable, accessible and enjoyable for everyone. I'm your host today, Pat Wright, joined.
- [58:36]
Grant
By Kathleen and Grant. Opera for Everyone airs Sundays from 9 to 11am Mountain Time, 189.1 Khol in beautiful Jackson, Wyoming.
- [58:47]
Kathleen Vanderwil
If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the Opera for Everyone podcast on itunes or wherever you get your podcast where you can find a rich trove of past episodes.
- [58:56]
Pat Wright
Stay with us. The second half of today's show is coming right up. Welcome back to the second half of Opera for Everyone. I am your host, Pat Wright, and today we are discussing Richard Wagner's opera Tannhauser. And I'm here today joined by two co hosts, Kathleen Vanderwil, always happy to.
- [59:27]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Be here for Wagner, and Grant, even.
- [59:31]
Grant
More happy to be here.
- [59:32]
Pat Wright
I'm thrilled that both of you are here to help me out with this. This is one we could talk about for hours, but we're going to get it done in our allotted time period. However, before we continue with the story, I'd like to take a moment and thank the people who made this beautiful CD that we're listening to. This is a recording made in the year 2001 with the orchestra and chorus of the State Opera of Berlin, and Daniel Barenboim was the conductor.
- [60:02]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Tannhauser was sung by Peter Seifert, Princess Elisabeth sung by Jane Eaglen, Venus sung by Waltrod Meiher, Wolfram sung by Thomas Hampson, Hermann sung by Rene Pappe, Herman's the Landgrave, and Walther sung by Gunnar Gudbjornsen. And I apologize if that is not pronounced correctly.
- [60:27]
Pat Wright
Oh, just a standing apology for all foreign language pronunciations and maybe even English as well. And just a note that the CD that we're listening to is the Dresden version. Well, having done those credits for this music, I think it's time for that opera helmet quiz.
- [60:44]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, Grant?
- [60:45]
Grant
Oh, it's me.
- [60:46]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Pat always has me do it, so I think I'm going to kick it to you.
- [60:49]
Grant
Okay, I got this thing. Oh, is no one going to quiz me? I just have to do it myself.
- [60:53]
Pat Wright
So, Grant, would you please fill us in on what we've learned so far about the plot of the opera in the first act and the first song of act two?
- [61:04]
Grant
All right, so there is this knight who has found himself in the abode of. Of the goddess Venus. He is in her underground lair, surrounded by mythical creatures. This realm of all imaginable pleasure. And he is in many ways very delighted by her and sings her praises, but also wants to be let out, wants to escape, wants to find the real world and wants to find salvation of a sort of. And ultimately the spell is broken when he says the name Maria, that is the Virgin Mary. He invokes the Christian religion and the pagan world disappears into a cloud of mist. Next thing you know, there are some Christian pilgrims coming along, going to get their sins forgiven in Rome. And he is about to join up with them when all of a sudden all of his old buddies show up. And they say, hey, there you are. Where have you been? They invite him back into the group and they are so excited to have him back as a part of their society. And then they launch into a big, beautiful men's chorus together. One of his buddies mentions this woman who has very much, let's say, feelings for him. And she is the good girl in this story. And so he goes to go see her because while he has been gone, something has been missing for her and indeed for the whole community. And he goes to see her and it is a great and joyous reunion.
- [62:44]
Pat Wright
Right. We haven't actually heard the reunion. We heard her anticipation of the reunion. But the reunion is just right now. It happened while you were speaking. In fact, it happened. And Wolfram is the one who leads him in. Leads Tannhauser in and says, there she is, there she is. Go.
- [63:06]
Grant
Dr. Wolfram is like the. Totally gets no credit, but good bro. He's trying to, like, be the good influence the whole time with mixed success. He doesn't get enough credit.
- [63:17]
Kathleen Vanderwil
I agree. And yes, I also really have a lot of feelings for dear Wulfram. Yeah, he's interesting too, because he. We haven't really said this, but Volfram is also in love with Elizabeth. And I say in love in my scare quotes here, but he also esteems her. And one of the reasons he's so happy to have Tannhauser Heinrich back is because he wants Elizabeth to be happy again so that he can interact with her again and she'll come to the hall and they can hang out. And so he's just. He's a very pure and innocent soul, I think, in a lot of ways. And is probably the best moral character in the entire thing. So, yeah, it's a poor one out for poor Vulfy.
- [64:04]
Pat Wright
Right. And this is one of the characters that is an actual character from history as a poet and a singer and.
- [64:13]
Grant
What'S more, contributed significantly to the King Arthur legend and indeed contributed a story that was later adapted by, of all people, Ricard Wagner into an opera. And so I think one of these days we'll all get together and do Parsifal or Percival, for those of you familiar with the Arthurian legends in English, which is the opera that Wagner did on the basis of the story that is written by the real life person who is represented here as Wolfram, the voice of decency and common sense who just wants everybody to be happy.
- [64:45]
Pat Wright
Yes. And Parsifal is Wagner's final opera. It's. Yeah, there's a lot of. I mean he's. Wagner's really found his lane here with all of these legend and the German ness. And in this opera we are not going to go into dissecting the music. But in this opera people will notice that he's getting closer and closer to the through composition of his ideal Gesamtkunstwerk, total work of art that he develops more fully in later operas. But it's all fallen into place starting about now.
- [65:23]
Kathleen Vanderwil
What else is falling into place is this beautiful reunion between Elisabeth and Heinrich. They are finally reunited after longing on her part and maybe temporary forgetfulness on his part, but she was always deep in the back of his mind. They are reunited and in their duet they both sing of what they've emotionally gone through since they've been apart from each other, the feelings that they experienced together before he left, and also the miracle, as he calls it, of what brought him back to her, the miracle of love. So as Grant mentioned, you can see he's not repudiating entirely this. This experience he's had. And indeed she is more accepting perhaps of the concept of the feelings that he is talking about. Here she talks about his song having inspired in her strange new life, that it would thrill through her like pain and penetrate her like sudden joy. It was longings and emotions she's never experienced. A nameless bliss, she calls it. There's some overtones perhaps to some of this language, not to imply that anything truly carnal happened between them before he left. But I think emotionally she is not this pure virginal figure as much as she is portrayed by the other men around her. Now that she's had this set of feelings for him.
- [66:56]
Pat Wright
I don't know, you may be speaking sacrilege about St. Elizabeth.
- [67:00]
Kathleen Vanderwil
I'm just trying to give Elizabeth her own character rather than what the men around her say about her.
- [67:06]
Pat Wright
Yeah, but I don't. I'm not sure that Wagner does.
- [67:09]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, but that's what she says herself about herself. So I'm gonna give her credit because.
- [67:14]
Grant
Elizabeth is sort of a historical person. She's somewhat loosely based off of this real person, a saint, Elizabeth, who lived in roughly this time period, not exactly right, but close enough. And was famous for her chastity and her works of charity and for dying young. She lived this brief and tragic life, but also one where she was well renowned for her extraordinary works of charity, the degree to which she gave up her privileges and gave everything she had, including, ultimately, herself, to the poor and the sick.
- [67:58]
Pat Wright
Well, here we're going to listen to Elizabeth and Tannhauser together in that duet that Kathleen just mentioned. And the total joy of the reunion of these two characters.
- [68:18]
Unnamed Speaker
Jesus.
- [71:01]
Pat Wright
Elizabeth and Heinrich Tannhauser back together again. And we are working our way up towards a song competition. And the Landgrave, who is the man in charge, the uncle of. And as far as we can tell, that's the entire family, the close family at the top here, she's. She. In fact, she refers to him as uncle, but the best father a person could have. He is the father figure, and he cares for her like a father. He's also. He's not quite Wolfram, but he's a very good person here.
- [71:36]
Kathleen Vanderwil
So Wolfram appears and leads Tannhauser off after this lovely love scene between the two of them, which he has had.
- [71:45]
Pat Wright
To witness, by the way, in the corner, because, you know, you can't leave a man and a woman alone.
- [71:49]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Of course. Of course. Although in the production we saw, he left them alone for, like, three seconds and they made out, which I thought was very interesting. Yeah, that was exactly what he was afraid of. So, yes, of course, he has to watch this love scene while he's in love with her, too, which just shows how good he is and how sorry I feel for him. So he leaves. We have this. This lovely scene of fatherly affection between Elizabeth and the Landgrave. But this is all leading up to the big set piece of this act, which is the singing competition. And the reason this is happening, this is something that used to be done regularly, but because of Tannhauser's absence, they have not held it. And Elisabeth used to preside over it. She has not entered the hall. She has been very turned away from that. And this is a sort of ritual of male bonding, I would say, in this society. So they are going to have this for the first time since Tannhauser left, he is going to compete in it. And Pat, I believe, called it sort of like a rap battle, which I loved. Well, I mean, that's what it is.
- [72:59]
Pat Wright
Because they're composing on the spot. But before we get into the competition, I would love to just play a little bit, because I love the music of this grand march. We have these horns playing the fanfare at various points throughout the scene, but it's very horn heavy in terms of the orchestration, and we have all the people coming in because it's not just brotherly bonding, it's also entertainment for the.
- [73:28]
Grant
Community and it's serving as a counterpoint to the orgiastic celebration we see in the beginning that you start off with this scene of art that is representative of decadence, and the later one, which is representative of art in its great and glorious form. Now, is the fact that the French style thing represented as the bad thing. Does that have something to do with Wagner getting run out of Paris? Maybe you can decide. But I do think it's interesting that you get these two celebrations of art, these two celebrations of beauty that are in direct contradiction to each other and each other's values.
- [74:10]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, I agree. And one of them is focused on one other person, so a love song for another person. And the other is for a community too, which is once again that same push and pull for him. But, yes, we have some lovely brass to welcome everyone in here.
- [75:34]
Pat Wright
On Opera For Everyone. We are talking about Tannhauser, Richard Wagner's opera, which first premiered in 1845 and went through basically revisions until Wagner was no longer able to revise again. But we've had the grand march of all the guests showing up in the hall to hear this singing competition. And the Landgrave, who is in charge, has explained that Elizabeth is the judge of these proceedings and she not only gets to decide who is going to win, but she also gets to decide what the prize will be. The Landgrave also lays down the terms of this singing competition, this rap battle, by explaining what they need to do in their songs. Describe the true nature of love.
- [76:27]
Kathleen Vanderwil
What a perfect topic for Tannhauser. Perfect, yes. And this is. Is implied, I would say, heavily. It is also sort of a bride competition, that the prize is probably her. That that her hand, if she should wish to give it, is the prize. So, of course, there's a bit of a wink, I think, at Tannhauser and maybe Wolfrum too, since he's in the running.
- [76:52]
Pat Wright
Yeah, I think that Wolfram May hope and wish, but he doesn't really believe he's going to win that aspect.
- [76:59]
Kathleen Vanderwil
He wouldn't know what to do with her if he did.
- [77:01]
Pat Wright
Oh, poor Wolfram. You never know. He might, he might.
- [77:05]
Kathleen Vanderwil
But let's hear what he thinks the nature of love is then.
- [77:15]
Unnamed Speaker
Here in Deezom. Adeline kryser fish who unblic marked mine hand sadly Zofielden topha deutsch und visor einstol, sir Eich wald harish frisch old grim.
- [77:51]
Pat Wright
That was dear sweet Wolfram singing about the tr. By the way, the names were drawn in a hat, essentially, or a bowl picked at random. And Wolfram went first and he has sung about the true nature of love.
- [78:06]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Or what he seems to think is the true nature of love, according to him. Yes, as he is a lovely, kind man. We get his vision, which is very chaste, as you would expect. It is metaphorical. He compares it to stars in the sky, the sort of distant coldness, but the beauty of stars of prayer. And this vision, which I love and want to talk about a ton, which is that love is like a miraculous fountain of water appearing before you. And seeing it, it revives your heart, but you would never sully it by drinking from it.
- [78:48]
Pat Wright
That.
- [78:48]
Kathleen Vanderwil
That is holy water, basically. And of course, water is connected to fertility, to life, to baptism, to the forgiveness of sins. You've got sort of both things happening here where it's both a cleansing thing, it can cleanse you of your sins. But also, as a little bit of a preview, Tannhauser will say, water is also for drinking. And you have a dichotomy again, setting up here, where Wolfram sees it as it is there, it is precious. I would die to keep it unsullied and pure. And that is what love is. And Tannhauser says, well, I want to take a big gulp.
- [79:27]
Pat Wright
Kind of says it all, doesn't it? Yeah. And when Tannhauser hears this, he's getting increasingly agitated, so much so that he breaks in and just a brief comment. There are more songs of Wolfram's nature in the Dresden version, Paris version trims it down a bit because they've given all that time over to the ballet. But essentially what happens is Tannhauser jumps in, jumps out of turn. He can't take it anymore. As Kathleen said, he wants a big gulp. He's like, you are so out of touch with the realities of human beings. And what love actually means, that this whole idealized on a plane where no one ever touches anyone else that is just out of touch. You don't understand. You are so idealized as to be profoundly incorrect. And Tannhauser cannot stand this, and he won't let it stand. And he jumps in and lustily sings about what love really is and all the physical experiences that he's had.
- [80:36]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes, and I agree. My favorite part there is that idea of touch. He says, sort of you worship love, and you aspire never to touch. But touching means something is close to you. It's close to your heart, it's close to your senses. Love should be something that involves the senses. It should be sensual. In a word, he is trying so hard to find a balance between these two worlds. He's not espousing 100% the hedonism that he's come from in Venusburg, but he wants to take what is good from that, and he wants to apply it to the society he lives in. That is not going to work.
- [81:14]
Pat Wright
No. And it's also interesting that at this point, the song that Tannhauser sings isn't just to refute Wolfram and Walter and all the rest. He reprises that Ode to Venus that we've heard three sections of in Act 1, and it comes back here, the fourth section in Act 2, this ode to Venus, where he sings about what he's learned in the Venusburg, the good parts as he sees it.
- [81:42]
Grant
And all this very intentionally echoes Plato's Symposium.
- [81:46]
Pat Wright
Plato?
- [81:47]
Grant
Yes, Plato, the ancient Greek author writing about Socrates. Of course, there's a lot of ancient Greek references here. And one of the great works of Plato is Symposium. And Symposium is basically just the story of a bunch of Greek guys get together at a party. They're all drinking, and they all argue about what the nature of love is, and each of them gives a little speech. And another of these are people who we know from other contexts, the comic playwright Aristophanes, for instance. And they're all giving their version of what they think love is. And the hero of the Plato story, as always, is Socrates. And Socrates answer is something a lot closer to what we see Wolfram giving here. It's something much more idealized, much more stylized. He thinks of love not as a God or goddess in the full sense, but as a spirit. He thinks of love as being exemplified by. Well, we get the word Platonic love from this particular episode in Plato's Symposium. The idea of love not being fundamentally carnal. And the sort of romantic subtext in the whole thing is that one of these other guys is trying to get with Socrates. And Socrates is like, yeah, you're beautiful, but that's not the point. And so here we've got kind of a retelling of that in a certain sense, where you've got this argument about the degree to which love is personified. And in Tannhauser's case, it's very personified. He has been with the goddess of love herself. She is not some ethereal spirit. She is flesh in some sense. And so that's contra Socrates here. And on the other hand, you've got Wolfram, who's very much in the idealization of love. And so you've got that idealization of love, the carnality of lust. And they're all coming to a head here. And that's part of why we've got Venus in this story rather than just some other goddess of love. There are many to choose from. But that reference here to the way that the ancient Greeks thought about this and some of the other things that were in the discourse in the 19th century. Nietzsche's dichotomy between the Dionysian and the Apollonian is just another way of talking about this kind of. We might even say romanticism versus rationalism is part of what's going on here.
- [84:15]
Pat Wright
And Nietzsche and Wagner have a complicated history together. The two men.
- [84:20]
Grant
I think frenemies is the correct word, perhaps.
- [84:26]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. And I keep going back to the fact that all of these stories keep us in a dichotomy, keep us in these two. It can be one or it can be the other. And I never want to say this is what Wagner's trying to do, but maybe what Wagner is trying to do is, once again say these two models are not right. And I think that they both are represented here in the opera as two different societies, too. Not just two ideals, but two societies that have built themselves around these two separate ideals. And I always like to say so in any story, especially a romance novel, for instance, you have to start with, something is wrong here. Otherwise everybody would be together and we'd all be happy and we'd skip all this part. Something is wrong. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. There is something diseased about both of these societies. Something is not right. And I think this is the truest expression of that. When he looks at the society, he's come back and he's looked at this society with fresh eyes, and he says, I see you for what you are, and I see what the thing is that's wrong. And what's wrong is they do not understand how to marry. The carnal and the chaste parts of love here. And so they are asking their men and their women to behave in a way that is unnatural. And he cannot, he cannot let that lie. And he knows, he must know that this is going to mean he's kicked out of this society. And it will mean that. But he is the artist. He has to tell the truth. He has to tell what he sees. And what he sees here is that something is wrong.
- [86:10]
Pat Wright
And I'm assuming the he that you keep using is Tannhauser, but also Vognus.
- [87:14]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And as he finishes this, as he's trying to. Trying to tell them something that they are not going to be able to listen to, there is just an uproar from all of the men and from the women as well. Just we. We can't hear this. This is horrible to even listen to. I think one of the most interesting little notes, and Wagner loves to leave a lot of little notes in there about what he wants to be going on on the stage. He says Elizabeth is prey to her conflicting emotions of rapture and anxious astonishment. Of course, that's this particular translation. But generally speaking, she is once again caught. She feels rapture at the beauty of the song and what he's saying that stirs her soul, but also she is anxious and she is astonished and she is, as we'll see a little bit later on, somewhat heartbroken because he is still clinging to this other woman, this other love.
- [88:10]
Pat Wright
Well, the assembled group sing together in chorus. He's been in the Venusberg. They realize that he has made a confession, confession of his sin. That he has spent time, quite a lot of time apparently with Venus.
- [88:26]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. And I think it's important to note here we're always kind of toggling between how realistic this is. Venusburg is metaphorical. Right. Of course. But it's also literally a place that he's been. And by being there, literally, he has not only betrayed Elizabeth, he's blasphemed. And there's a sense here of this medieval world actually being the one that's modern in the sense that it's Catholic, it's looking towards Rome and away from the pagan, the Greek, the old Roman Venus. And he has blasphemed by looking back towards the pagan times, which is very.
- [89:04]
Grant
Arthurian legend as well. The idea that there's the quote unquote modern, which in the Arthurian legends is the whole Christian overlay and the ancient, which is as represented by the many, many pagan touches, all the stuff with Merlin and the lady of the lake and the way that characters get sucked into the fairy netherworld that represents the pre Christian times, but also pre history in the era of legend and the age of magic and monsters.
- [89:39]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And just to add Klaas into it for just hot second, that is the world of the peasants. That's the world of the common people too, who took much longer to come around to organized Catholic Christianity. The world of the nobles is the world of Rome. And that is the world that they have to keep healthy, keep moving towards. Otherwise you could just fall back in the class structure as well, right?
- [90:02]
Pat Wright
And so here everyone is in an uproar. The men are drawing their swords, the women say, fly from him. So all the women, just in horror and to save their own purity, run away. They depart. The men are getting ready to fight. And this pandemonium is stopped by one strong soprano voice singing out, holder haltenine.
- [90:35]
Unnamed Speaker
Me.
- [90:54]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Elizabeth stops them from basically becoming a mob at this point. They're so frenzied in their desire to restore order through mass violence. She is the only one who is able to see clearly. I think the fact that she's the only woman, I think those chime well together. There she is able to see clearly. And she says, you have to stop. You are not behaving as a real Christian should, is largely what she says to him. She says, he has been bewitched, he needs grace, he needs salvation. And here you want to just, you just want to kill him. You don't have a right to be his judge. That's God's job. So really Wagner puts into Elizabeth's mouth, I think probably a lot of what he has been thinking about when it comes to religion here, which is that organized Catholic religion, which is what these knights are following, is also a perversion of true Christian grace and mercy. And she is able to be this clear eyed voice that stops them from carrying out some other terrible crime, right?
- [92:08]
Pat Wright
Because she wants to make sure that the sinner is not without hope. She believes in the possibility of mercy, of redemption.
- [92:18]
Kathleen Vanderwil
She believes in atonement too. Yes, and I think that's. We'll talk about that more. But she believes that salvation can be attained through repentance and atonement in this world. I think it's interesting too here she takes a moment to say, like, what right do you have? I'm the one that was really hurt. They are acting as the society has been hurt. And she puts the personal above that. And she says, I am the maid who he destroyed with one swift blow in the Flower of her youth. This is once again where I'm getting a little bit of the. Like, what happened between the two of them before he left? Something happened, something that she's saying destroyed her and destroyed the flower of her youth. She is the injured party, and she is the one who should be able to say what happens to him. And what she says is, he needs to go atone for his sins.
- [93:14]
Pat Wright
And I have to say, when you watch this opera in full, which I recommend to everyone through whatever means you can, streaming or live and in person, do watch the whole thing. But it's really fascinating in Act 2, because you feel like you're coming to the end of this act. It's big choral, big feelings, and then things calm down. But it's not the end of the act. We will swell up again with big choral pieces and big singings. But what does end it is when the Landgrave steps in, basically, to delineate, to articulate a pathway to what Elizabeth is suggesting. He says, listen, we've got these pilgrims. One group, the older group of pilgrims, has gone on ahead. The younger group is still planning to march to Rome. You get with them, and you go to Rome and you ask the Pope for forgiveness. You need to be pardoned by the Pope.
- [94:16]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah. And it's very clear from what he says and what the other knights say, that although they bow to Elizabeth because she is this deified figure among them, you can really see that they call her an angel here repeatedly, more and.
- [94:28]
Pat Wright
More as the act goes on, which.
- [94:30]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Of course, I cling on to the fact that she's literally just asserted her humanity. And then they immediately say, you, angel of light. And she's like, no, that's literally the opposite of what I just said. But they. The men are horrified still, like, they're like, you okay? You're the angel. We listen to you. But I'm disgusted by this guy, and I do not forgive him. And I think he's awful, and I really want to run him through with my sword. So this is like. They kind of. They punt it a little bit. They say, okay, give him. Give him to rogue. Leave him to. Leave him to the Pope. And if he can fix him, then we'll take him back. But that's the only option here.
- [95:28]
Unnamed Speaker
Pa Sam Ram ram. Sa.
- [99:19]
Pat Wright
You're listening to Opera for Everyone. And this is Tannhauser by Richard Wagner. We have ended the second act with Tannhauser himself saying, to Rome, to Rome. And he's going to jump in with the pilgrims and leave. Act Three opens back in that very same outdoor area where Tannhauser found himself when he was ejected from the Venusberg. It's a bit of a sad scene because everyone's waiting and wondering what is going to happen? Are the pilgrims going to come back? Is Tannhauser going to come back? And Wolfram is there so worried about Elizabeth. She is once again suffering and visibly physically deteriorating because she prays day and night that Tannhauser will be successful in gaining a pardon. She's praying for his salvation. She's praying that he is able to rejoin the community and imagine the joy that Elizabeth feels. And we see her getting excited when we hear the chorus of pilgrims returning.
- [101:08]
Kathleen Vanderwil
K.
- [101:33]
Unnamed Speaker
The earth filled the.
- [101:49]
Kathleen Vanderwil
We hear these pilgrims, but we will find out that Tannhauser is not among them. And Elisabeth, as we mentioned, is. Is already so wasted away. And I find this trope very frustrating in opera, especially in Wagner, because it reappears again and again. He loves a dying or dead woman who redeems his male characters. And it's not just him. It's a very romantic ideal.
- [102:21]
Pat Wright
Yes.
- [102:22]
Kathleen Vanderwil
And is often connected to something like a wasting illness, like tuberculosis. The Victorians love their tuberculosis ladies. So basically, Elizabeth is wasting away. We don't really know why, just that her interior emotions are starting to show on her physical body. And it is very clear from here on out that she is dying. Wolfram sees this. He is heartbroken, of course, and he keeps offering. He's clearly trying to offer himself as an alternative, or perhaps the companion to her in her death even. But he is not the person that she is waiting for. And as she waits and as she hears these. These pilgrim strains and realizes that her love is not among them, she sinks further and further into despair.
- [103:05]
Pat Wright
And she has more or less jumped on board with what the men in the chorus were singing at the end of Act 2.
- [103:13]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes.
- [103:13]
Pat Wright
Where she says, make me pure and angel like and let me enter into the blessed realm. I mean, she is prepared, preparing herself for entry into heaven.
- [103:23]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, and I think that's a great point. She has fully embodied the angel role at this point. She has given up the idea that she could be a flesh and blood woman with a flesh and blood man, which I contend. I think she dreamed of that to a degree. And perhaps if she sacrifices herself, then he will return and that's all she has left to hope for.
- [103:45]
Pat Wright
And the heartbreak of Wolfram observing all of this and even asking her if he can keep company with her in this Poor Guy, which she says no.
- [103:57]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Poor Bulfy. He really is. Maybe he might be the man for her. He's at least the man for her in this iteration of her, this very holy version of her. And I feel sorry for him in a lot of ways, because Tannhauser is just a mess and he is not ready for any kind of adult, mature relationship with anyone. That is definitely true. And Volfram is a good match. He is mature, he is an adult. He is unfortunately caught up still in the society's nonsense, to me, at least. Nonsense. But for this version of her, for the society she lives in, he is a good husband. But she is a unique figure in the sense that she does not agree to that. This is the easy path. This is the socially acceptable path. And she says no, she would rather die as a virgin than marry a man she just likes instead of loves. And I am trying desperately to redeem her character because I find her very frustrating and underwritten in this. But I do think there are glimmers there of a deeper person in her character.
- [105:02]
Pat Wright
Well, that is, I think, the whole fundamental problem. She is not a fully formed character. She is there for the men around her to react to, for what her influence is on the men. She's not a fully formed woman.
- [105:17]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, thanks, Wagner. But it's his fault. He could have made her better. Yeah, could have written her better. Work on it, Wagner.
- [105:26]
Grant
And yet, at the same time, she's not a fully formed woman. She's not a really fully formed character, even. And yet there's a hint in the story that he wants her to be. Because ultimately it's not ideals of one kind or another that appeals to Heinrich. It's actually the people, the person of Venus, not some arbitrary spirit of love. Even though we can look at her and say she's not a fully formed character, because she's not. But it is, in some sense she's a person and it's her individuality that matters. And in the same way, on the other side, where you get, yes, she is Maria, she is the Virgin Mary, but she's also not. She's like in some sense, a person. And so there's like, to me, I think you're right to call out that tension, because I feel like something in Wagner wants to recognize that it's in the individuality that the truth comes. But also he is, for one reason or another, trapped, or is trying to describe a society that is trapped in this promiscuous woman versus virginal woman dichotomy, where they're not really a full Human, either way.
- [106:33]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Right. And, I mean, I think a succinct way of saying that it's the divinity of both of them is their problem, and it's Tannhuser's problem with them. It's Venus's sense of being a goddess that's too overwhelming for him. He says that. He says, I can't be with you because I'm mortal. I love you, but you're just too much. And in Elizabeth, too, it's. It's the divine, this sort of identity that's being put upon her by the men in her life, that is the thing that's going to drive them apart in the end. So, really, I think that's very astute, that it's. He wants that. That messy mortal ness, not the divinity in these women.
- [107:10]
Pat Wright
Yeah, interesting. Well, Wolfram is left because after asking if he can go with her, and she says no, she walks slowly off the stage and we're to understand she is entering heaven at that moment. She is departing this realm and moving into the next. It's fascinating operatic death, the way it happens, but there we have it. And Wolfram is left alone on the stage for a bit to sing a number of things. But most famously, he sings to the.
- [107:51]
Grant
Gracious evening star, better known as Venus.
- [107:56]
Pat Wright
Venus.
- [107:57]
Grant
The planet Venus is known as the evening star. It is one of the brightest objects you can see, the brightest object in the sky apart from the moon and the sun. And it is an object of fascination. It has had associations both with the devil and with divine power.
- [108:16]
Pat Wright
Isn't it fascinating? I don't think it's a coincidence here that Wagner has him singing to the evening star.
- [108:22]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, it's sort of. All odes end up being odes to Venus one way or another. Even Wolfram. I know I had that moment where we were watching it and I said, even he is singing to Venus in his own way. There's a funny little moment coming up when Tannhauser comes back and he's sort of tormented. He asks Wolfram, he says, do you know the way to Venusberg? And I see that connection here, that Wolfram too, even as we call him, this sort of model of a modern and mature man. There's a part of him, too, there's a part of us all that is looking for Venusburg.
- [110:30]
Pat Wright
Well, Kathleen, you already let us know that despite him not being with the pilgrims when they return, Tannhauser does in fact return. And he returns now to encounter Wolfram.
- [110:43]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes. He never sees Elizabeth again. They sort of miss each other by A few minutes here.
- [110:50]
Pat Wright
And necessity. By necessity. Yeah.
- [110:52]
Grant
Like Romeo and Juliet.
- [110:54]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Exactly. Like Romeo and Juliet. They are denied a true final parting.
- [110:58]
Pat Wright
Okay, but not exactly. But thanks for Romeo and Juliet reference.
- [111:02]
Kathleen Vanderwil
That's correct. They're not allowed to have a romantic farewell.
- [111:07]
Pat Wright
Okay.
- [111:08]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, true. I think that's important. He returns and he. He is still in the state in which he left in the sense of being tormented. He has not been given absolution. Instead, he has, gosh, suffered everything he could possibly suffer and given himself lots of penance by walking over stony ground with bad shoes and suffering as much as he can performatively, I think.
- [111:34]
Pat Wright
Yeah. He explains to Wolfram, I did everything. Whatever all the other pilgrims were doing, that's penance. I made sure to do it more. So I didn't even drink water when they were drinking because I needed to deny myself. I didn't sleep under any shelter. I slept on the snow and ice because I wanted to be truly penitent but didn't work out.
- [111:57]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yes, well, that's rather missing the point, wouldn't you say? Grant of penance of atonement.
- [112:04]
Grant
Yeah, it's interesting. What does penitence mean in this world? And to some extent, it's connected in this odd way with hope. And sometimes atonement is understood as being something very legalistic. You do something wrong to someone in order to atone, you pay them back or pay them back with damages. Right. That's the whole civil court system in a nutshell.
- [112:26]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Right. It's restorative in some way. Yeah.
- [112:28]
Grant
And that doesn't in any way depend on someone being sorry, really, that kind of making things right, that restitution. You can just do the letter of the law. You don't have to really be sorry that you did the thing, but if you pay up, if you make it right, you've made it right. And in the history of the Judeo Christian tradition, there is this tension here where at the same time, repentance is thought of as being something that comes deeply from the heart. What you mean in your soul, and the various rituals that are associated with it that sometimes mean that people think, I said the words, I made the sacrifice, I went to confession, whatever it is, I should be good now. And so there's something very interesting here. How sorry is Tannhauser, really?
- [113:08]
Kathleen Vanderwil
He's not. I don't think he's sorry. I think he's sorry for what he lost. I don't think he's sorry deep down.
- [113:15]
Pat Wright
And he's a little bit sorry that he made Elizabeth. Sad, but just a little bit.
- [113:19]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, that's. Yeah, he's sorry he lost Elizabeth.
- [113:21]
Grant
And I think again, he, like, he wants this world where he can have both, where he can have the carnal satisfaction of love. But with Elizabeth, he wants to have what we think of as being a real love story where the. The two happy people ride off into the sunset together. And for a variety of reasons, he doesn't. He doesn't live in that world. That's not a possibility for him. Here we get something of the Wagner story versus the original legend. And in both of them you get this common thing, which is Tannhauser. Heinrich goes to the Pope and says, can I be forgiven for this? And the Pope says, no, which those of you who are up on your Christian tradition and history should know that that's not actually what he's supposed to say. But the Pope says, no. And he says, you can no sooner be forgiven than that this staff of wood that I carry could sprout forth and bloom into flowers.
- [114:20]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [114:21]
Grant
So he goes away despondent. And here is where there is a. A big break between what happens in the original story and the Wagner version. Because in the original story, at this point, that's kind of it. He goes off. He returns to Venusburg. He hides under the mountain, and needless to say, the Pope's staff shoots forth into bright bloom, and they send messengers after him, but it's too late. He has gone under the mountain, never to be seen again, and his soul is lost. But that's not what happens in the.
- [114:58]
Pat Wright
Wagner version, not in this story. He does announce his intention to return to Venusburg, because what else is he going to do? He has failed as a penitent. And as Kathleen said earlier, he even asks Wolfram, can you show me the way? Which was the. I was there before, but I forgot how to get there. How do I find Venus?
- [115:19]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Right. Because she's also said that he can never return. So it's not clear that he can just say, okay, well, let me put that into my gps. She may not accept him back, and he might become a man with no world, no society, but that's not what happens. Yeah. And so he's sort of calling out to her, but as is prefigured by their many backs and forths, at the very beginning, she does want him back. And so she does appear. And she is there as this living temptation in front of him. You can have this back. You can go back to the beginning of the story without having any growth whatsoever. If you Want. And he wants that. He almost chooses it.
- [116:00]
Pat Wright
Yeah.
- [116:00]
Grant
And Venus appears in her trademark cloud of pink mist. And in the libretto, mist or fog or smoke of one kind or another, obscuring things, passing away and revealing things, comes up a number of times. And this is distinctive because it is one of the classic ways we talk about the veil between the fairy tale world, the pagan world and the real world, and the way that those things can pass from one to the other through a cloud of mist.
- [116:32]
Pat Wright
Interestingly, in the very original, not what we call the Dresden version now, but in the 1845 Dresden performance was a little subtle. Venus never did return on stage as she does now. It was only pink light and red light and the music, that was the presence of Venus that was going to welcome him back. And even Wagner had to admit it was a little bit too subtle for the audience. He had to be a little bit more explicit and actually bring the singer performing Venus back on stage to make clear that she is a real presence, a real option for him.
- [117:14]
Kathleen Vanderwil
So he's all set to go back to Venus. He says, I might as well. She's here. She's right there. Look how beautiful she is. I had a great time. And this whole character growth thing, maybe not for me. No, seriously. I mean, he's caught in a cycle and he's about to go back to the beginning of that cycle. He's on the Wheel of Fortune and it is turning. But as before, when he had a moment similar to this in Act 2, the name of Elizabeth is what stops him. He hears Wolfram cry out Elizabeth's name. He stops and remembers. And once again, as we've said, it's almost like a breaking of a spell, because Elisabeth, when she's right there in front of him, he's got a lot to say. When she is not, her name does not pass his lips. He doesn't really talk about her. He mentions sort of vaguely this feeling of wanting a different kind of love. But he's not talking about her as a person, but when her name is said, it breaks the spell that Venus has cast. And Venus disappears in her puff of smoke. And he turns back to see the beer carrying Elizabeth's body is coming towards him. And he sees that she has died and that death represented here as almost as a willing sacrifice in a way that is enough to move him to salvation. So it's not the Pope, it's not organized religion or patriarchy that does it. It is the death of a woman, which is a very powerful symbol for Wagner. And it varies how the next part is done. He either dies with her just spontaneously.
- [118:55]
Pat Wright
That's how Wagner wrote it.
- [118:56]
Kathleen Vanderwil
That is how Wagner wrote it, yes. Which I quibble with. That seems kind of a cop out. Or he lives on in the version that we saw. He lives on in the society that he had been expelled from gathers around him and the pilgrims gather around him and they are all changed by this sacrifice to maybe a hopeful vision of what Christian mercy can look like. It's sort of this new Christ like figure has shown them the right way to be with each other.
- [119:25]
Pat Wright
And there's the physical representation of that wooden staff which has burst forth with leaves and or flowers so that you see exactly what has happened. God's power is more mighty than the Pope's.
- [119:40]
Grant
Yes.
- [119:41]
Kathleen Vanderwil
The staff has brought forth new life and all of the community, all of the pilgrims are gathered around and they are singing in praise of this mercy of Elizabeth's and this truly hopeful ending.
- [119:55]
Pat Wright
Yes. What a show. Grant, Kathleen, I thank you so sincerely for talking about this opera with me. It's rich and there's so much there. Thank you. Thank you both.
- [120:10]
Grant
Thank you.
- [120:11]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Yeah, happy to. Happy to talk Wagner.
- [120:16]
Unnamed Speaker
Sam it.
- [121:08]
Pat Wright
Thanks for listening to another episode of Opera for Everyone. I've been your host, Pat Wright, joined.
- [121:14]
Grant
By Kathleen and Grant. If you enjoyed the show and would like to hear more, please subscribe to the Opera for Everyone podcast on itunes or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [121:23]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Opera can be challenging, but everyone loves a good story, and a story set to music is even better.
- [121:30]
Pat Wright
Our mission is to make opera understandable expressions, accessible and enjoyable because we believe opera is for everyone.
- [121:59]
Kathleen Vanderwil
Sa.