Tannhäuser
Longborough Festival Opera, until 18 June
The Longborough phenomenon continues, indeed if anything gets more remarkable each year. This year they are tackling Wagner’s least popular opera, Tannhäuser, and making it actually thrilling, at least when the title role is taken by Neal Cooper. There really is nothing to be done with parts of Tannhäuser except to get a move on, and that is what the great Wagnerian Anthony Negus does.
This is one of the shortest performances I have seen or heard: since Wagner never got the opera into the shape he wanted, there are many possibilities, from his alterations over the years, for adding or subtracting a sizeable chunk. Usually these days we get the 1861 so-called Paris Venusberg music, an immense and obscene demonstration of why Tannhäuser yearns to get out into the fresh air, and then mostly what Wagner originally wrote for the work in Dresden.
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