Word: tannh
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Wagner, a musical and political revolutionary who liked nothing better than a good row, would probably have loved it. Whether he would have loved what Bayreuth did to his Tannhäuser, the cause of all the furor, is another matter. Director Götz Friedrich managed to turn a tale of a man caught between the forces of spirituality and sensuality into a pointed parable of Fascism defeated by Socialism...
...audience began to stiffen when Act II brought on a male chorus dressed in black uniforms, strongly resembling Hitler's SS troops. As Tannhäuser lay dying at the end and cries of "Hallelujah!" rang out, 345 klieg lights lit up the theater, and instead of pilgrims, the audience saw a stageful of workmen glaring at them, raising clenched fists like a mob in a social protest play...
LEFT-WING TANNHÄUSER'S FALL, ran the headline in Süddeutsche Zeitung next day. "The Bavarian minister-president vowed to cut off all further subsidies to Bayreuth if any more Communist propaganda is ever attempted," fumed Wolfgang Wagner, the politically neutral director of the festival and grandson of the composer: "Is this democratic freedom?* Haven't there been boos in Bayreuth before...
...style has remained but the spark has gone. Friedrich has changed all that. "A genius like Richard Wagner," he says, "inevitably provides room for a whole complex of often contradictory interpretations." There was nothing contradictory about the box office results after the news of his scandalous Tannhäuser. Gossip about Bayreuth's impending demise stopped, the Bavarian ministry denied it had ever thought of cutting off subsidies, and the paying public, though it may have come to denounce, remained to cheer. Said Wolfgang: "When Grandfather went to Bayreuth, he conceived it as a workshop. Tannhäuser...
...Christa Ludwig seethes with eroticism, suggesting a world of impossible sexuality. Soprano Helga Dernesch as Elisabeth, Wagner's virginal opposite to Venus, is the perfect embodiment of pinched Victorian purity. Best of all is Tenor René Kollo, a German pop singer metamorphosed into a Heldentenor, who sings Tannhäuser with a gleaming tone, power, and a dramatic force unequaled since Lauritz Melchior...