Tannhäuser: Nina Stemme & Christopher Ventris

About the Event

Alongside Christopher Ventris, Nina Stemme makes her long‐awaited debut at the Paris Opera in this production of Tannhäuser.

Richard Wagner always considered his Tannhäuser an incurable wound; a painful portrait of both man and artist. As he wrote to Louis II, seeing his work once again twenty years after its creation, he could not help crying, blinded by the image of his old wounds – old but forever open. These wounds were even more irreparable than those Amfortas was to lament in the composer's future Parsifal. And certainly, in 1845, at the time Wagner composed Tannhäuser, the composer was disillusioned with a life that had brought none of his longed‐for rewards. His existence had been nothing but a series of exiles, from Magdeburg to Paris and even Riga. Wagner had entered into an unhappy marriage and, deprived of love, never ceased to dream sorrowfully of it. Success had not come to him, despite the concessions he granted the public.

When he composed Tannhäuser, Wagner created the clearest and most consummate of self‐portraits. At the same time it was his least complete work – unachievable and romantic in the strongest sense of the term.

Performed in German

Sir Mark Elder    Conductor
Robert Carsen    Stage director
Paul Steinberg    Sets
Constance Hoffman    Costumes
Robert Carsen, Peter Van Praet    Lighting
Philippe Giraudeau    Choreography
Patrick Marie Aubert    Chorus master

Christof Fischesser, Hermann
Christopher Ventris, Tannhäuser
Stéphane Degout, Wolfram von Eschenbach
Stanislas De Barbeyrac, Walther von der Vogelweide
Tomasz Konieczny, Biterolf
Eric Huchet, Heinrich der Schreiber
Wojtek Smilek, Reinmar von Zweter
Nina Stemme, Elisabeth
Sophie Koch, Venus