Here Tannhauser becomes more than just a man well acquainted with and wistful of his lust. Losing his patience with his fellow knights, Wolfram (Baritone, Lucas Meachem) and Vogelweide (Tenor, Robert Stahley) he bursts into an ode to love’s unbridled, carnal nature and ends up being ostracized. Turning a deaf ear to Venus’s pleas and threats, Tannhauser returns to uptight Thuringia where he participates in a joust of love songs in honor of Elisabeth only to realize the naive and preposterous nature of courtly love.
But who, having tasted such wanton pleasures, can return to the puritanical mores of society? Certainly not our knight.
The opera depicts the tale of a Franconian knight, Tannhauser (Tenor, Issachah Savage) who has spent an orgiastic sojourn with Venus, the goddess of love (Soprano, Yulia Matochkina) in her salaciously red-hot, pansexual abode, but now longs for the mundane and virtuous joys of mortals in medieval Thuringia, as well as the virtuous love of Elisabeth (Soprano, Sarah Jakubiak).
Issachah Savage as Tannhauser in LA Opera’s 2021 production of “Tannhauser” Photo: Cory Weaver
0 kommentar(er)
