‘Tannhäuser’ and a Martyrdom on the Wartburg: Paula M. Bortnichak and Edward A. Bortnichak are both chilled and thrilled by a hard-hitting ‘Tannhäuser’ in Estonia

Review of Tannhäuser, directed Slater, conducted Pähn, Tallinn, 2015.

November 2015, Volume 9, Number 3, 82–4.

The redemption of the lost hero through the devotion of a heroine is a theme that runs through every Wagner music drama. The problem for modern audiences often centres around the dramatic plausibility of these salvations; neither transfigurations, nor suicide, nor death by heartbreak of these sopranos convinces us as a sufficient modus operandi for the resolution of the dilemmas of their respective heldentenors or heldenbaritons. This is especially problematic in the case of the Apollonian–Dionysian struggle raging within Tannhäuser which the pining away of the faithful Elisabeth is somehow supposed to resolve. Wagner’s multiple performance versions demonstrated his own recognition of the difficulty of getting the balances right in this work.