Eurovisual Song Contest: Mark Berry’s verdict on the Paris ‘Tannhäuser’ is mixed

Review of Tannhäuser, directed Carsen, conducted Elder, Opéra Bastille, Paris, 2011.

March 2012, Volume 6, Number 1, 72–4.

A weekend in Paris took in two German operas, both possessing special associations with the Paris Opéra. Lulu, seen here in a fine revival of Willy Decker’s 1998 staging, had received its first full performance at the Palais Garnier in 1979 from the dazzling Bayreuth pairing of Pierre Boulez and Patrice Chéreau. The case of Tannhäuser in Paris is, to put it mildly, less unambiguously positive, though we should recall that, whatever the disgraceful scenes at the Salle Le Peletier, it is to Paris that we owe Wagner’s revisions, which for many of us render the work a still more fascinating proposition than in its ‘Dresden version’. As is usual for performances of what we have come to call the ‘Paris version’, Wagner’s further modifications for Vienna were followed, but the crucial changes had already been made for Walter Benjamin’s ‘capital of the 19th century’.