The festival in Bayreuth open this year, with Richard Wagner’s “Tannhäuser”. Director Tobias Kratzer speaks in a DW Interview about his special staging on the Green hill.
Theatre and Opera Director Tobias Kratzer
Richard Wagner is regarded as a revolutionary of the music theatre. In order to realize his utopia he created his own theatre in Bayreuth, which is the annual pilgrimage for Wagner fans. This year, the Bayreuth festival will open there on the green hill festival with Wagner’s Opera “Tannhäuser and the singers ‘war at Wartburg”, re-staged by the award-winning theatre and Opera Director Tobias Kratzer.
The plot: The minstrel Tannhäuser is gone. Tired of a society that celebrates him as a genius, he seeks his fortune in the “Venus mountain,” and the sensual pleasures of the goddess of love. As if awakened from a dream, he learns at the Wartburg by the singer Wolfram, that he has conquered the heart of Elisabeth, the niece of the Landgrave,. In a singing contest, Tannhäuser sings of the love. However, not as a pure virtue, but the sensual love and the goddess Venus praises. Then he asks the Pope in Rome for forgiveness. This rejects his request, however. Elisabeth sacrifices her life for the Beloved. Only as well as Tannhäuser is saved, his soul.
For Director Tobias Kratzer in Wagner’s Tannhäuser in 1845, however, much more than the dichotomy between sacred and profane love, the devotion to a “whore” or “Saint”. About the specifics of his production, he has spoken in the DW-Interview.
DW: How do you tell the story of Tannhäuser in the year 2019?
Tobias scratches: For me is important, what the biographical Moment of Wagner’s Tannhäuser arose. If you take this into account, appears to be the Opera, all the more current and contemporary. For me, that was the interesting finding. His piece is produced in a biographical Phase in which Wagner does not really know where it’s going with his life; whether he would hold as a revolutionary and Anarchist in the Brockhaus (encyclopedia, editors ‘ note) to enter, or really as a composer.
Richard Wagner realized his dream of opening their own musical theater
I think this uncertainty and at the same time, this future is open, also the socio-critical aspects, which includes this piece, will make it much more current than if you were to limit the Whole thing to a “whore-Holy”-problem of romance.
If you read the piece carefully, one discovers that Wagner told not so much a piece about sexuality-concepts, but perhaps a piece of about two models of life. Because sexuality is obviously a part, but I would not say it is the decisive part. My Tannhäuser is certainly one in which you have the least to bare skin to be seen.
Who is this Tannhäuser?
It could be negative to say that he is the one who stylized himself an outsider, who feels as an outsider. The tragedy is perhaps that he is in the existential sense, not the outsiders, but at any time back in the society. I don’t think that his inner turmoil is based on a fundamental Alienation. Wagner tells much more of the tragedy of a man who wants to be different, but to society.
The story is originally based in Thuringia at the Wartburg castle in the 13th century. Century. Where have you located the plot now?
The Richard Wagner Festspielhaus in Bayreuth
Is located the Whole of 2019. It begins in the first act with a kind of trip to the sites of German romanticism and what has become of it. In the second act, it comes directly from the game, even a site of the German romanticism, which changes a bit between the amusement Park and the temple back and forth. And in the third act, we see a not so well-defined space, a sort of junkyard, the illusions, the hopes and the issues that it has in the previous files is seen.
Richard Wagner always refers back to the world of the gods. How can the Mythical in Wagener’s Tannhäuser to Today’s translate?
Wagner describes how even the founding myth of the piece. The Inspiration he had on a horse-drawn carriage ride from Paris to Dresden, as he drove on Höselberg over and said, this is my mount of Venus. The idea came to him on the road “on the road”. Unlike the Wartburg, the Venusberg is not just an imaginary, but a geographically definable place is just. And that’s why a road movie is the first act in us. Tannhäuser is just not sedentary, so to speak, “on the road” and imaginary of the Venus mountain. In order to support the various stage funds, there is in this production, a strong Video level, in the Tannhäuser on this Trip on the road and where you experience in a very beautiful live scene of Venus and Tannhäuser during a big fight in the car on the highway.
The correct title of the “Tannhäuser and the singers ‘ war at Wartburg is”. What is a war?
It’s just a singer is of course the first time the competition, which really is the characters collide. And this of course is also to the point. We have a branch stage, the below shows the classic three-dimensional a Wartburg, and in the top you see on a canvas is a backstage story told. For us, this war works on two levels. You can get very close to the characters. For example, where Elisabeth and Tannhäuser negotiate their relationship. As you can see exactly what triggered the reunion between Tannhäuser and Elisabeth backstage at tungsten feelings.
The use of Videos is for you an important means in the staging?
The Video is a means to expand the box set. I try never to use the Video for something, what could the stage be better or what I don’t get through staging. It is important for me, this exciting medium in a very specific way.
Tenor Stephen Gould sings the Tannhäuser 2019 in Bayreuth
You’ve already worked at many Opera houses. What is in the Bayreuth festival house game different?
The Ghost of Wagner is not appeared to me yet. But the Campus atmosphere here is reminiscent on the Green hill with the many samples rather of a classic film Studio. The order is quite different than the normal Opera houses. You begin to make the light in the stage picture, which is very unusual. Usually it is staged first, and then illuminates everything. Here one learns to know the world, before one has developed the procedures, and then begins to work in new productions with the singers on the stage to. So it is a bit of a topsy-turvy world, but it also has its perks, if you can produce on a very pragmatic working level, a Spirit in the Ensemble.
Here you have a top of the Ensemble, including the experienced tenor Stephen Gould. He sings the Tannhäuser for the first Time.
I knew he is a singer, who shortly before this performance, celebrated its centenary of Wagner’s Tannhäuser. And then of course as a Director is already a bit skeptical. He’s also on something New, if he has cooked the recipe for success a hundred Times already? What he wants to take it? There’s been preliminary talks, behaviors, or thought forms? Since he has not surprised me extremely, because it was in him all the case. He has entirely new, as the piece would be completely virginal, to get involved, once again, to go with me on this exploration tour in the factory. I found one of the most beautiful experiences in this production.
The interview was conducted by Hans von Bock