Blood Sacrifice: Michael Fuller finds intriguing resonances in Geneva’s new ‘Tannhäuser’

Review of Tannhäuser, directed Thalheimer, conducted Elder, Geneva, 2025.

March 2026, Volume 20, Number 1, 61–3.

This new staging of Tannhäuser at the Grand Théâtre, a co-production with the Deutsche Oper Berlin, was originally to have been staged by Tatjana Gürbaca. Her late indisposition led to Michael Thalheimer stepping in, rejoining a production team with which he has previously worked, and completing a trilogy of Wagner stagings in Geneva which began with Parsifal in 2023 (reviewed in TWJ, xvii/2) and continued with Tristan und Isolde in 2024 (another production shared with the Deutsche Oper).