Wagner's Tannhauser

Some of Wagner’s music is not from this world.

R1 Where is it from, Dorothy?

I'm listening to it, OP. I generally don't care for Wagner, or for much opera, but I'm somewhat enjoying this. I love Claudio Abbado's early Mahler cycle, and I play the Second Symphony not quite as often as you play this, but pretty frequently. Anyway, thanks for the new music.

R3 You are welcome! This is why I make posts like this. My neighbor got me into opera. He recommended Tannhauser and this piece to me.

Mahler 2 is good, but I love Abbado's recording of 1 and 5. Again, my neighbor got me into Mahler too

I played this overture with my college orchestra back in the day. It was a fun experience.

Wagner's estate should have sued Tolkien into oblivion.

I love the overture and a few other bits, but I much prefer his later operas as a whole. The advance in inspiration from Tannhauser to Lohengrin is immense.

Only the first half or so of the recording you linked is the actual Overture. In order to receive a production in Paris, Wagner was ordered to add a ballet. (That's a long story I'm not getting into.) He put it right at the top of the show, the opening scene, an orgy at the court of Venus, and the music is called the Venusberg Music. Originally the Overture came to its full stop and then the Venusberg Music started but Wagner eventually rewrote the end of the Overture so that the it flows directly into the Venusberg Music. That's the version recorded here.

So there are two basic versions of Tannhauser, the original without the ballet and the Paris version with many changes, including the addition of the Venusberg Music. Both versions are in the standard rep. with variations to each version. Sometimes the original Overture and the Venusberg Music are performed separately as symphonic concert pieces, as is the combined version.

I've way oversimplified parts of the above. The compositional history of Tannhauser is complex.

"Oh Bwunnhiwwde, you're so wuv-wy..."

"Yes I know it, I can't help it..."

It is a great piece of music

OP, I've started listening to the entire opera, live from Bayreuth last year. I have no idea how far I'll make it, as it's 3 hours long, and I have to go out before it ends. We'll see. But thank you again for the new music.

The overture to Tannhauser sounds so sad, it makes me want to cry.

I love it! Two years ago I was in Bayreuth, at the one performance where Thielrmann replaced Gergiev. Lise Davidsen and Markus Eiche were out of this world. I never experienced Tannhäuser as intensely before.

I got a Wagner overtures CD as a kid, so I think Tannhauser overture is glorious as well, definitely his best overture. I’ve never listened to the full opera tho.

I played parts of Lohengrin back in school band (Elsa’s Procession from Act II), so I became pretty familiar with the opera and love it.

Although, honestly I only listen the Solti Ring frequently anymore. Nothing like getting drunk/high and conducting glorious parts from my couch like the end of Die Walkure, the B2B hammer tunes from the end of Act I of Siegfried, the climactic love duet that opens Gott, or Gunther’s welcome to Seigfried shortly after. Fucking gorgeous.

I can't wait for Peter Gelb's new production at the Met: set in the 1950s with a New York Mafia vibe. Because that's never, EVER been done before, and Gelb thinks it's cutting edge! And the "O dicte Halle" is set in a bathhouse! And there are sex workers performing mock fellatio on stage, even during the overture! Because it's Gelb cutting edge! Gelb-tastic!

Whenever I feel low I put on the last act of Die Walküre. The final scenes are pure magic.

r11 here. I'm listening still. I'm at a chorus around 1:22:00, and I like it. It's hard for me not to think of his antisemitism—not in this piece, but in general. What a bad person Wagner was.

Normally I frown on mafia hits but Gelb's would be most welcome.

OP: Thank you, Mr. Tannhauser. I just bought a copy of the whole opera, conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli. Thanks again.

The film, "Meeting Venus," starring DL goddess Glenn Close, is about a troubled production of "Tannhauser."

Also, the classic Bugs Bunny cartoon, "What's Opera, Doc?", features music from this opera.

R20 I love Meeting Venus! Istvan Szabo is one of my favorite directors.

I forgot to mention not only did I get to play the overture to Tannhäuser, it was also the first opera I saw at the Metropolitan Opera. I thought it was a magical production. The scene changes in the first and last acts made an impression on me. Of course it was all projections, but for a kid from flyover land it was total stage magic. Hearing the pilgrims chorus at the end making the full circle from the overture made it a powerful ending.

I never stop thanking my parents for dragging my brother and myself to New York to have these experiences.

[quote]I love the overture and a few other bits, but I much prefer his later operas as a whole. The advance in inspiration from Tannhäuser to Lohengrin is immense.

Lohengrin is the one (of the ten we get with regularity) that took me the longest time to warm up to. I at first found it so dreadfully square and monotonous. But I agree with the preference for the later operas: Tristan und Isolde, Meistersinger, the four Ring operas, Parsifal.

Wagner is his own genre. He has his timetable, and you have to yield to it, find yourself in sync with it. When I finally converted, I listened to him a lot for an entire year, most intensively over a summer.

I did not share the affection elsewhere in the thread for those old-fashioned pictorial Met Wagner productions from when Levine was the supreme leader of the place. The Tannhäuser was the first and best of them, but none is/was a favorite of mine; in all cases I saw better productions from other theaters. There was a quip from someone about how Levine formed his musical taste from Furtwängler and Toscanini and his visual taste from the operas at the Cincinnati Zoo.