In Kasper Holten’s production, recorded at Royal Danish Opera in 2009, Tannhäuser is a poet torn between family and the conventional world of the Landgraf’s court and his creative processes symbolized by Venus and Venusberg.  There are numerous visual clues that perhaps we are even supposed to identify Tannhäuser with Wagner himself.  Far from being a young man, this Tannhäuser is middle aged, married to Eizabeth and has a son.  He has withdrawn into a psychological world of his own and Venus, his muse, and Venusberg are in his imagination.  Only after death is he recognized as a genius.  Of the rest, how much is supposed to be external and how much internal to Tannhäuser’s imagination is a bit hard to grasp.  If nothing else it goes some way to making the sixty year old Stig Andersen as Tannhäuser and the equally mature Susanne Resmark as Venus almost believable.  The 1900ish setting works quite well for the sexually repressed court of the Landgraf von Thüringen though a chorus of pilgrims returning from Rome in full evening dress is a bit of a jar.  The concept is quite interesting but really probably stretches further than the libretto can accommodate.  This Venus isn’t remotely credible as a goddess of love and the matronly Elisabeth singing about being a pure, young maiden is just odd.

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