In Norwich, a director is caught trying to murder Wagner’s Tannhäuser

Seventeen years ago the Norwegian National Opera staged two cycles of the Ring in Norwich’s Theatre Royal, performances that have remained vividly in the minds of anyone who saw them. Now Theater Freiburg has visited Norwich with two performances each of Parsifal and Tannhäuser. I was hoping to see both, but transport problems meant that I was only able to go to the second performance of Tannhäuser. I shall have quite a few criticisms to make, but all told it was a triumph, and was warmly received by a far from capacity audience.

There aren’t many chances to see this problem child of Wagner’s, and this was the finest account I have seen in several decades, much more moving than the Royal Opera’s production of nearly four years ago. Where Tim Albery’s production was merely null, this new one of Freiburg’s is a fairly aggressive example of director’s theatre, that disease which has nearly killed my inclination to go to operas, with Wagner being the chief victim.