Review: Tannhauser at the Liceu (Barcelona) 10th April 2008
The poster formally known as Mrs T xx
Elisabeth - PETRA MARIA SCHNITZER
Wolfram von Eschenbach - MARKUS EICHE*
Venus - BEATRICE URIA-MONZON
Hermann - GUNTHER GROISSBOCK
Walther von der Vogelweide- VICENTE OMBUENA
Biterolf - LAURI VASAR
Heinrich der Schreiber - FRANCISCO VS
Reinmar von Zweter - JOHANN TILL
Shepherd boy - ELIANA BAYON
Direccio musical - SEBASTIAN WEIGLE
Direccio d'escena - ROBERT CARSEN
* The originally scheduled Wolfram was Bo Skohvus but according to the
cast list he was off sick with "una pneumonia"
This was my first visit to the Liceu (and the beautiful city of
Barcelona!) and I was extremely impressed in general. This is the
Robert Carsen modern-dress production of Tannhauser which was first
seen in Paris last December. The director's "Konzept" involved
fiddling with the story and making it all about art and painting
instead of singing and harp-playing - and the Act 2 song contest was
replaced by a painting competition in an art gallery. Certainly a
very interesting idea, if a somewhat flawed one. As a result the
subtitles all had to be tampered with, as all references to singing,
song and singers were removed and replaced by art, painting, artists
etc. Considering I'm a purist when it comes to accuracy of subtitle
translations then this really irritated the hell out of me.
Act 1 and Act 3 were both set in an artist's studio (within the
Venusberg??) - the minimalist set consisting of an easel, a trolley of
paints and a mattress, upon which a naked double of Venus posed for
Tannhauser to paint. It was tastefully done and the nudity seemed
appropriate in this case. The "ballet" was rather odd - a troop of
male dancers appeared, all dressed up to look like clones of
Tannhauser (well, clones that were 25 years younger and about 5 stone
lighter). To my surprise they suddenly and inexplicably stripped down
to their skimpy underpants and started smearing red paint all over
their bodies before rolling about on the floor as if they were having
an epileptic fit. Perhaps the director was trying to make a point
about some modern art being a load of pretentious crap? If so then
it came across very well - until the moment when one of Tannhauser's
friends slipped over on the paint-covered floor and fell flat on his
arse (in front of the TV cameras which were filming the performance)
Act 2 was set in an art gallery and Elisabeth entered down the centre
aisle of the stalls to greet it. Most of the other cast and chorus
also made their Act 2 entrances and exits via the stalls, which caused
a lot of distraction amongst the audience and required the house
lights to be left on for health and safety reasons. As each "singer"
sang his competition song then he unveiled a painting which we the
audience couldn't see. This part of the act was staged very
effectively and made a striking tableau, especially at the end when
the remorseful Tannhauser was cowering in the corner, trying to escape
from the male chorus who had ganged up on him in a particularly
menacing manner. Unfortunately the modern-day setting didn't really
make sense with the plot here - and it was hard to understand the
shocked, horrified reaction which resulted in the "blasphemous"
Tannhauser being banished in disgrace, just because he'd painted a few
naked women and taken part in the odd orgy.
The start of Act 3 was unintentionally hilarious. Wolfram enters and
discovers the pure and virtuous Elisabeth writhing around on the
mattress with her hand between her legs. He then announces: "I knew
that I would find her here in prayer!", which caused a lot of
repressed sniggering around the auditorium. Oh dear. Unfortunately
the end was a bit of a confused mess IMHO. It wasn't made clear that
either Elisabeth or Tannhauser had actually died. In fact, Elisabeth
re-appeared wearing an identical costume to Venus (a white bedsheet)
and then reclined on the mattress next to Venus in what seemed to be
an invitation for Tannhauser to join them in a threesome. Tannhauser
didn't die - he was surrounded by admiring art critics and asked to
hang his "controversial" painting up on the wall in the gallery,
alongside various paintings of naked women - from the famous classic
of Venus standing on the seashell to other more modern works, some of
which bordered on the pornographic. I'm afraid the point of this was
rather lost on me.......perhaps I should have bought a programme.
The cast was very strong in general, lead by the powerfully-voiced
Peter Seiffert. How refreshing it was to hear a true Heldentenor
after so many hours of listening to John Treleaven of late. His voice
really was superb and he totally stole the show with his clear ringing
high notes and rich quality of tone. He coped very well with the
tessitura of this demanding role and got to the end without sounding
particularly strained. He also made a very fine effort with the
acting and was surprisingly convincing, particularly when required to
look tormented. There was no chemistry whatsoever between him and
Elisabeth - but I later discovered that these two are married in real
life, which I guess explains it :-)
Petra Maria Schnitzer was extremely good as Elisabeth and her voice
was hefty enough to cut through the Wagnerian orchestration and full
chorus with ease. I really liked her and she was vocally very well
matched with Seiffert. The voice has a steely edge to it and a very
secure top - and she acts nicely too. Due to the illness of Bo
Skovhus then we got Markus Eiche from the "B" cast as Wolfram. He has
a very elegant, lyrical baritone voice but sadly seemed to lack stage
presence and charisma. He seemed anonymous on stage and never stood
out......in fact, most of the time you never even noticed that he was
there. Unfortunately he failed to get across the real tragedy of
Wolfram's unrequited love for Elisabeth or make his character seem
sympathetic. A shame, because the voice was good and his "O, du mein
holder Abendstern" was lovely to listen to.
I wasn't desperately impressed by Beatrice Uria-Monzon as Venus.
Sometimes she sounded underpowered and her top was rather uneven,
despite some nice dark colours in her middle-register. But she
certainly looked the part and acted very well, which helped make up
for it. The rest of the cast were also very good - the men's chorus
in particular were excellent and the Pilgrim's Chorus brought tears to
my eyes. I also loved the orchestra - I couldn't fault them and they
produced a very sensitive and intelligent reading of the score.
Anyway, it was a thoroughly enjoyable evening - the musical standard
was so high that I was able to overlook some of the sillier/less
orthodox elements of the production. I'm not sure if it will be
released on DVD or shown on TV at some point but there were definitely
cameras there filming the performance I attended on 10th April
Best regards
Mrs T xx
David Melnick
message
news:9964b3ce-96b2-423e...@w5g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
> fine stuff.
Thanks, Mrs. T.
Painting, schmainting, Ms. Schnitzer has great high B's. I hope the video,
when it comes out, is in good fidelity.
dav
The poster formally known as Mrs T xx
> > Thanks, Mrs. T.
>
> Painting, schmainting, Ms. Schnitzer has great high B's. I hope the video,
> when it comes out, is in good fidelity.
>
> dav
Not sure if it will be released on DVD......it might just be shown on
Spanish telly or something but I'll keep an eye out for it. There
doesn't seem to be many commercially-available Tannhausers on DVD at
the moment so I'm sure the market could handle another one.
I bet they edit out the bit where Klaus von der Schnauz (or whoever it
was) slipped over in the red paint though :-)
Mrs T xx