Tannhäuser

This is the first complete television production recorded at the annual
Wagner Festival in Bayreuth. Director Götz Friedrich sees the minstrel
Tannhäuser as a rugged artistic individualist, much as Wagner was himself,
misunderstood by his contemporaries who seek to throttle his inalienable
right of expression. He turns his back on a regulated, stifling society and
retreats into the world of his own impossible dreams. Whereas other
productions of "Tannhäuser" show the minstrel acutally biding time in the
court of Venus, in Friedrich's version Tannhäuser's harp triggers an
imaginary Venusberg, in which the strings become a tangled web of pure
sensuality. Tannhäuser discovers that a completely anything-goes society is
just as restrictive in the end, and he returns to the real world. But
Tannhäuser can't go home again. Once again he lashes out at his
hypocritical associates, who condemn him. His only defender is the saintly
Elisabeth, who in this production is played by the same soprano who sings
Venus - two sides of the coin in the eternal feminine. She prays for her
own death, so that thereby Tannhäuser's soul leaves this restrictive world
for a better one in which his genius is appreciated.

Composer:	Richard Wagner
Title:	Tannhäuser
Conductor:	Colin Davis
Staged By:	Götz Friedrich
Soloist:	Lynne Charles, Spas Wenkoff, Kevin Haigen, Gwyneth Jones, Bernd Weikl, Hans Sotin, Robert Schunk, Franz Mazura, John Pickering, Heinz Feldhoff
Set:	Jürgen Rose
Orchestra:	Orchester der Bayreuther Festspiele
Chorus:	Chor der Bayreuther Festspiele
Choreography:	John Neumeier
Video Director:	Thomas Olofsson
Genre:	Opera
Length:	189 minutes
Cat.No.:	A05004557