Rodney MiInes on a knight of doubt and sorrow
The new production of Tannhauser at Covent Garden is visually dismal and dramatically inadequate, but for once my anger at the waste of time, effort and money was dissipated by unqualified admiration for the musical side of the performance. It looks as if Cohn Davis's appointment as Music Director is really starting to work; I nearly wrote " at last," but he has not been there long and we must not forget that Sir Georg Solti himself had some sticky years in office before he started to command dog-like devotion from press and public alike.
My colleagues have been dredging up such words as "enthusiastic," "committed "and "
vigorous" to describe Davis's conducting of Tannhauser, and they are otten meant as a condescending euphemism for " wellmeaning, but not actually frightfully good." They will not do here. The orchestral playing and the singing it accompanied had been prepared with meticulous and detailed care. This may sound like stating the obvious, but the results are seldom so striking, and the fact that this has been the case both with Tannhauser and last week's Katya at the Coliseum shows that there is little wrong with the musical administration at either house.
It was the quality of ensemble that was most striking, the sheer togetherness of the orchestra both internally and vis-a-vis the stage. Again, something to be taken for granted in the best of all possible worlds, but remember that for all the epic sweep of Goodall's Wagner, precision of ensemble is not one of that maestro's strongest suits. Not that Davis, with his strong technique, achieved this at the expense of expression or natural surge: on the contrary, it was the combination of ebb and flow, both in dynamic and tempo, of complete unanimity and of textural clarity that made this so exciting a musical realisation.
His presentation of the overture demonstrated the care with which he approached the work. The opening theme might, perhaps, have sounded grander if it had been a bit slower, and the Venusberg episode had a little more zing if it had been faster, but the way these two tempi (they were in fact the same tempo) worked together resulted in a convincingly thoughtful adumbration of all that was to follow. In addition I shall long treasure the dreamily sensual string playing that launched the Act II love duet, the accompaniment to Wolfram's 'War's Zauber ' (who ever said that Wagner could not write tunes?), and the cunning pacing of the Act II finale, which rose to a breathtaking climax of Goodall proportions. The dramatic tension of Act III was brilliantly sustained. Unstinted praise, too, for the lusty augmented chorus and for a management that went to the trouble and expense of engaging the splendid Wandsworth School Choir for the vitally important freshness of timbre needed in the later finales — all this was subsidy well spent.
The cast was good, and sang in clear, comprehensible German. It .is not their fault that the text is convoluted and stilted, though its shortcomings could be minimised by a good modern translation. The intensely graceful phrasing and freshness of vocal interpretation from all concerned bore further tribute to Davis's labours. Richard Cassilly's tormented knight was powerfully sung and intermittently powerfully acted. Jessye Norman gave us no wilting, moony Elisabeth; there was no suggestion that the character's chastity had in any way affected her vocal technique. Here was a cheerful and healthy maiden, and a far more constructive foil to Venus than is usual. The way she sacrificed the traditional dreamy legato of her prayer to meaningful enunciation of the text, thus making it an active rather than passive act of self-sacrifice, I found extremely moving. Josephine Veasey made the most of the ultimately ungrateful role of Venus, and Norman Bailey disguised the fact that he is not one of nature's Wolframs with some expressive mezza voce singing.
At the final curtain, the vicious little claque that has been making life hell for Davis over the past year was either shamed into silence or had. perhaps stayed away altogether. Either way, I hope he has them well and truly beaten. If, however, the Kaslik/Skalicky/Svoboda production team had shown its collective face, I might have contributed my own sotto voce hiss. Svoboda's ways with reflection, shape and projection can be effective when they work with a drama, as in his Pelleas. But they say little in glorious isolation from the matter in hand, as in Nabucco and, I believe, here. Adaptability is not his second name.
Tannhauser is a hideously difficult work to stage today, when most of us live in the Venusberg and the restrained moderation (and repressiveness) of the Wartburg is the subject of Whitehouse/Longford music hall gags: difficult, but not irrelevant. Although the themes of wayward creative impulse and the possibility of sin were more fully developed by Wagner in later works, the basic conflict is strongly presented and with a little thought and research much could be made of this Renaissance Man's tragedy. The.• Spectator September 29, 1973 Again, it is not easy to depict the superficial attraction and sterile futility of unbridled sensuality at one and the same time, though to judge from Kenneth Hurren's reports this is achieved in the .commercial theatre fairly regularly whether intentionally or not. But Alfred Rodrigues's tatty dances fell wide of the mark, and some vaguely Lesbian shadow play hardly less so. Remembering the way Abigaille celebrated her coronation in Nabucco, I am getting, dear diary, a teeny bit worried about Covent Garden, No element of shock, then, and little contrast save in overall shape between the realm of Venus and an outside world severely boxed in and dully lit. When Tannhauser's natural impulses get the better of him in the song contest, we get a vague red splodge on the stained glass projections, which then reverse out in blue and white, when what is needed is something along the lines of Playboy centrefolds.
Passing quickly over the blandly incompetent handling of the hunt (six knights march on and stand ir a straight line until it's time to exit — sheer village hall) and the song contest (where a tentative stab at realism is jettisoned in favour of getting the characters where theY are needed for the next tableau), I instance the treatment of Wolfram, a sort of dry run for Sachs, as indication of the level of thought that has gone into the production. Wagner specifies that he remain on stage to observe, and later contribute to, the Act II love duet, and that he should witness Elisabeth's prayer. Mr Bailey was simply hustled into the wings, his role reduced to a cipher. That this non-production should have been harnessed to such musical ex. cellence is too frustrating to face with equanimity.
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