Tannhäuser

Semyon Bychkov conducts Wagner’s great Romantic opera

Teatro Regio, Tuesday 16 March 2010 at 7.30 pm

An appointment not to be missed at the Teatro Regio, Tuesday 16 and Saturday 20 March at 7.30 pm: Maestro Semyon Bychkov will conduct the Orchestra and Chorus of the Regio in Tannhäuser by Richard Wagner. After the extraordinary production of Don Carlo in 2006, one of the most important conductors of our times returns to the Regio to perform the opera in concert form, as he already did with Das Rheingold in 2001. This solution enables the purely musical aspects of this masterpiece to be emphasized, and is also an extremely stimulating occasion for our artistic forces, which are literally  placed in the foreground. In the cast are the best interpreters of the Wagnerian repertoire: the South African tenor Johan Botha in the role of the protagonist  Tannhäuser; baritone Boaz Daniel will be the minnesinger Wolfram von Eschenbach; the female roles of  Elisabeth and Venus will be interpreted respectively by Ricarda Merbeth and Michaela Schuster, two singers who have devoted most of their careers to these roles; Kwangchul Youn will be Hermann; the tenor Jörg Schneider will be Walther von der Vogelweide and baritone Jochen Schmeckenbecher will sing Biterolf. Completing the cast are Dominic Armstrong, Lucas Harbour and Erika Grimaldi. Chorus Master is Roberto Gabbiani. The Children’s Chorus of the Teatro Regio and the “G. Verdi” Conservatory of Torino is prepared by Claudio Fenoglio.

Presented for the first time in Dresden in 1845, Wagner’s Groβe Romantische Oper was revised and modified incessantly by the German composer over a period of thirty years, until the staging in Vienna in 1875; this last version - known as the Paris version – corresponds to the one to be performed at the Regio.

In Torino of the late nineteenth century, Wagner’s music met with great success, giving rise to impassioned debates in social and literary circles. Torino contended with Bologna for the title of “Wagnerian city” presenting within a few years Lohengrin (1885), Tannhäuser with Giovanni Battista De Negri (1888), the Italian premier of The Valkyrie (1891) and The Twighlight of the Gods (1895) under the direction of Toscanini. Between 1888 and 1921, there were a good five productions of Tannhäuser, repeated only many years later at the Teatro Nuovo in 1949 and in 1970. Returning to the Regio then, after forty years, is the opera that has as protagonist Tannhäuser, a minnesinger who really existed (1205-1268), and is set in Wartburg, a castle near Eisenach where the Landgraves of the Thuringian Valley lived and where Germanic minnesingers challenged each other on themes of love and war.  Tannhäuser, after having enjoyed the pleasures of Venus in the Venusberg, saves his soul through Christian penitence and the help of the pious Elisabeth.

Semyon Bychkov, presently Principal Conductor of the WDR Sinfonieorchestrer in Cologne, confirms his predilection for  Wagner and reveals to us his original interpretation: «he is the closest composer to Buddism that I know of.  In his operas a clear beginning is not perceived, nor  an unequivocal ending.  His stories seem to renew themselves endlessly: in this sense, the use of Leitmotiv is extremely systematic. It is no coincidence that among Wagner’s unfinished projects there was an opera about Buddha. And who is Parsifal, after all, if not a sort of Christian Buddha? What I love about Wagner is his anti-materialism, resolved musically in fascinating forms».

Tannhäuser will be broadcast live by Rai-Radio3 on 16 March at 7.30 pm and will be presented to the public by Enrico Girardi during the usual Incontro con l’Opera to take place at the Piccolo Regio Puccini Wednesday 10 March at 5.30 pm.

Box Office of the Teatro Regio, piazza Castello 215 - Tel. 011.8815.241/242 - e-mail: biglietteria@teatroregio.torino.it - www.teatroregio.torino.it.

Torino, 1 March 2010

Paola Giunti
Head of the Press Office