Virgin Territory: Matthew Rye is seduced by a provocative staging of ‘Tannhäuser’

Review of Tannhäuser, directed Corradi, conducted Abdullah, Aachen, 2016.

July 2016, Volume 10, Number 2, 52–5.

Compared with Calixto Bieito’s Tannhäuser in Antwerp (reviewed in the last TWJ), which eschewed any reference to religion, Italian director Mario Corradi’s production of Wagner’s ‘Romantic opera’ for Theater Aachen gives the whole drama an ecclesiastical setting. Tannhäuser is a Catholic priest, and we first see him during the Overture celebrating Mass in Italo Grassi’s impressive, atmospheric church-interior set. But he is a priest with a troubled mind.