Tannhäuser

und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg

An opera by Richard Wagner with the Staastopernchor and the Staatskapelle Berlin, directed by Sasha Waltz

After seven years of enjoying sensual pleasures in the realm of Venus, the goddess of love, the minstrel Tannhäuser longs to return to his

terrestrial life, and especially to his earthly beloved, Elisabeth. But his ambition to unite art and life as well as erotic lust and religious love fails because of the rigid conventions of Wartburg Castle’s bigoted

community, and his own radicalism.

For the libretto of his romantic opera, which premiered in Dresden in 1845, Richard Wagner used literary versions of medieval sagas by Ludwig Tieck, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Ludwig Bechstein. In doing so, he merged two sources of material: the Wartburg Singer’s Contest around Heinrich von Ofterdingen at the beginning of the 13th century and the saga of the minstrel and poet Tannhäuser, who is said to have sought in vain for forgiveness from the Pope for his sins in Venusberg. The

religious-philosophical dualism of pure erotic pleasure and the pious

transfiguration of love is reflected in Wagner’s score in two equally

contradictory soundscapes: there are sensual, seductive sounds for the realm of Venus, and solemn pilgrim choruses for the earthly world, which clash irreconcilably during the singing contest at the centre of the opera.

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