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Tannhäuser and the Singers' Contest at Wartburg

Richard Wagner (1813 – 1883)

05
Saturday
October
16:00 - 20:00
D prices: € 144.00 / 112.00 / 82.00 / 50.00 / 30.00
Information about the work

Romantic opera in three acts
First performed on 19th October, 1845 in Dresden
Premiered at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on 30th November 2008

4 hrs / 2 intervals

In German with German and English surtitles

Introduction (in German language): 45 minutes before beginning; Rang-Foyer

recommended from 16 years
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Cast
05
Saturday
October
16:00 - 20:00
D prices: € 144.00 / 112.00 / 82.00 / 50.00 / 30.00
Cast
the content

About the work
Repelled by the dispassion of the Wartburg society of minnesingers, Tannhäuser, a singer-knight, removes to the interior of the Venusberg in search of fulfilment. Eventually his longing for Elisabeth leads him to leave again. Back at the Wartburg castle, Tannhäuser takes part in a singing contest whose theme is the nature of love, but when he sings that love is ideally about sensual satisfaction, he is cast out and sent to Rome to seek papal absolution. He returns from Rome without the hoped-for indulgence and resolves to return to the Venusberg. Then a miracle occurs and he finds redemption after all.

Of all Richard Wagner’s operas, this is arguably the one most closely associated with the composer’s own biography and his conception of himself as an artist. The tale of the song contest in the Wartburg castle contains all the themes common to Romantic conflict in art: the quest for social acceptance on the one hand pitted against a questioning of conventions on the other; the search for sensual fulfilment – and its irreconcilability with an idealised, de-sexualised concept of womanhood; and not least the conflict between self-expression in life as in art and the guilt engendered by this egomania.


About the production
In her production for the Deutsche Oper Berlin Kristen Harms focuses on the complicated relationship between Tannhäuser and Elisabeth, a young Thuringian noblewoman, who represents the ideal of pure, pristine love. Harms sees TANNHÄUSER as “a tale of two people, each with two souls in their breast”. This accounts for her casting of a single singer to play both Elisabeth and Venus, who fuse at the end of the opera into a single person, one who has found redemption. As for Tannhäuser, Harms presents him and his mild-mannered friend Wolfram von Eschenbach as two character sides of the same coin.

By the same token the Venusberg, Tannhäuser’s abode at the start of the opera, is deemed by Harms to be “not a den of vice but a realm in which wish, insistence and desire are interwoven in a knot of libidinous fulfilment.” The story is told against a backdrop of tableaux that draw on illustrations found in texts of the High Middle Ages yet also incorporate a touchstone to the present day.

Our recommendations

Tristan and Isolde
Der fliegende Holländer
Lohengrin
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
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07
DEC

Adventsverlosung: Das 7. Fensterchen

Today we are giving away an unforgettable family Christmas classic: Engelbert Humperdinck's HÄNSEL UND GRETEL on 26 December 2024 at 2:00 p.m. for four people. If you would like to take part in the draw for four tickets, please send an e-mail to advent@deutscheoperberlin.de today with the subject line ‘The 7th window’.

Although HÄNSEL UND GRETEL is actually set in spring – it's strawberry season –, this opera is a Christmas classic for young and old alike. And so Humperdinck's ‘children's Christmas pageant’ is once again scheduled this December in Andreas Homoki's imaginative production: are they naughty or just playful, the two children Hansel and Gretel? In any case, the broom they are supposed to bind breaks, the stocking that is already half-knitted dissolves into squiggly yarn. And then the milk pot falls to the floor. So the mother sends the two children into the forest to collect strawberries. Unexpectedly, they escape the confines and poverty of the broom-maker's house and find themselves in an enchanted forest that transforms everything instantly: their clothes are suddenly much more colourful, birds sing sweetly in the iridescent light, strawberries and flowers grow in abundance, lovable clowns rock them to gentle dreams... If only the witch weren't there.

For over 100 years, Humperdinck's HÄNSEL UND GRETEL has been one of the most popular operas for the whole family. Andreas Homoki tells the story in a child-friendly and straightforward way. Together with his set and costume designer Wolfgang Gussmann, he counteracts the opulence of the music with a lightness and poetic imagery that reaches its magical climax in the night scenes in the forest.



Closing date: 7 December 2024. The winners will be informed by email on 9 December 2024. The tickets will be sent to you as Ticketdirect. No right of appeal to the courts.