DVD Videos

“Holten's staging leans on Wagner's struggle to be the kind of novelistic artist he wanted to be while hindered by the confines of German court theatre...Venus [is] winningly played by Resmark as a kind of saucy Rosa Klebb spy on her author's life and emotions. Again as in the Ring Holten shows well in directing intense emotions...We never just sit in the imaginary best seat in the stalls but see the action from every possible voyeuristic angle.” Gramophone Magazine, December 2011

“Holten takes an Ibsenesque view of this medieval fable, and presents the hero as a radically minded artist at odds with the restraints of Victorian high society. The singing isn’t top drawer, but the performance is gripping, which cannot always be said of this problematic piece.” The Telegraph, 2nd December 2011

“This richly traditional staging still looks superb and often sounds it in Levine's passionate reading, especially Troyanos' Venus and Weikl's Wolfram. But Cassilly is a dry-voiced hero, and the chorus is underpowered.” BBC Music Magazine, August 2006 ***

“One of the most gorgeous and gloriously romantic productions in the Met´s repertory . . . the scenic designs are both breathtakingly grand and painstakingly subtle” New York Times

“The central dilemma...is obliquely translated into the modern art world...Yes it's Sunday in the Park with Tannhauser...Musically, the primary drawing card is Peter Seiffert, not the most camera-friendly Tannhauser but among the most vocally compelling...there are so many moments where he not only triumphs over the vocal difficulties but does so with gratifying richness of tone and meaningful text projection.” Gramophone Magazine, June 2012

“Peter Seiffert sings powerfully and expressively as Tannhauser, and Petra Maria a bit too powerfully as Elisabeth. The orchestra, under Sebastian Weigle, gives a strong account of the score” BBC Music Magazine, July 2012 ***

“Seiffert probably cannot be bettered in the title role today; he's tireless, thoroughly involved and maintains a voice with a bronze ring to it...Beatrice Uria-Monzon is attractive enough to stand up to her body double in Act 1 and the voice is rich and appealing, save for some hard work at the very top...Seiffert is the best of all the recorded heroes [on DVD] and despite a few directorial backfires, this will certainly keep you interested.” International Record Review, July/August 2012

“Thirty years separate these performances of Tannhäuser. The original video of the 1978 revival of Götz Friedrich's 1972 production was, we're told, 'the first complete film from Bayreuth', and this is its first DVD release.
You're soon aware that it has not had the benefit of the latest technology: the lighting is not always well suited to the action and shifts between relatively close and relatively distant shots can appear awkward and arbitrary. The sound, too, is basic in its fixed focus, giving the voices too much prominence. All of this hardly matters, however, since the performance is electrifying, managing the difficult feat of doing justice to Wagner's inspiration without seeking to gainsay its gloriously hybrid nature.
Jürgen Rose's setting is austere, and one of the work's greatest moments, the astonishingly abrupt transition in Act 1 from the Venusberg to the idyllic countryside near the Wartburg, goes visually for too little. But the combination of Friedrich's tightly focused production and Sir Colin Davis's supremely flexible and energised conducting more than compensates. Davis is particularly in his element in the early stages of Act 2, to which he brings a Berliozian buoyancy, and what can sometimes seem almost comically tedious repetitions in the long processional chorus are anything but.
Adding to the lustre is the central trio of star performances. In 1978 Dame Gwyneth Jones was at her peak, taking time out from her definitive Bayreuth Brünnhilde to show how the roles of Venus and Elisabeth can be equally affecting, given maximum vocal and dramatic conviction.
She weeps real tears in the mime that accompanies the Prelude to Act 3, as well she might, realising perhaps that she would never be better than this. Less sympathetically filmed, Spas Wenkoff still scores with the dogged power of his singing and acting, never out of character, never off the note, while Bernd Weikl is caught at his ardent, mellifluous best. With a fine supporting cast and the Bayreuth chorus and orchestra on top form, even those who resist the stylised eroticism of John Neumeier's choreog- raphy for the Bacchanale should find this set a memorable and moving experience.
The 2008 Baden-Baden version on ArtHaus Musik is, of course, technically superior as the film of a stage performance. It is not strictly comparable with the DG release anyway, since it offers the full post-Tristan Paris version, with the extended Venusberg music, while Bayreuth uses its own favoured hybrid – the Paris Bacchanale, before the singing starts, then the original Dresden version. Performances of the full Paris version are more likely to use different sopranos for the roles of Venus and Elisabeth, and it is one of the strengths of Baden-Baden 2008 to have two such different but excellent singers in these roles. Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund is new to me, and (like the Danish bass-baritone Stephen Milling, who comes close to upstaging most of his male colleagues as the Landgraf) is clearly a singer-actor of huge potential in this repertoire.
The solo singing is the outstanding feature of this new recording. Robert Gambill might have more of the 'mad axeman' about him than Bayreuth's Spas Wenkoff, but he has immense stamina and the presence to command the stage, especially during the big ensembles. Roman Trekel is a less spontaneous Wolfram than Weikl, his voice recorded with a degree of edginess that reduces its actual lyrical beauty. As with the remastered DG, the ArtHaus sound balance favours the voices at the expense of salient orchestral detail, but this drawback is much less bothersome than certain details of the production. In a setting even more austere than Bayreuth in 1978, Nikolaus Lehnhoff seems determined to drain the work of its Christian iconography and to nudge the audience with such deliberately incongruous props as a (nonfunctioning) microphone for the contestants in the Hall of Song. The production gets off to a bad start with a robotic, anti-erotic Bacchanale, and it is here that conductor Philippe Jordan's unsteady tempi, replete with pseudo-expressive over-emphases, first become apparent. Though it recurs, this problem is less pervasive than it might be, and Jordan is an alert supporter of his singers. But it is Colin Davis who has the fuller measure of this extraordinary score.” Gramophone Classical Music Guide, 2010