The Perfect First Wagner: There is so much to enjoy in Tannhäuser

Tannhäuser is a perfect first Wagner opera, particularly for those interested in him but intimidated by all he so gleefully demands, starting with lots of your time. The source of some of the coldest feet lies in pronouncing large words like “Tannhäuser” (TAHN-hoi-zer), which is indeed an opera with lots of names that sound like ancient beer brands. Let the cast worry about all of that; your only task is enjoyment.

And there is so much to enjoy! Tannhäuser is, beyond everything else, a celebration of singing. You will enjoy the opera much more if you are not trying to follow the plot, so knowing an outline of that before you begin is a great way to prepare yourself. Glance at the supertitles, but don’t glue yourself to them, because reading and listening are two very different actions. Tannhäuser is a full-sensory experience, but it is primarily designed, with its broad and noble melodies, to be heard.

And oh, the extraordinary things you will hear in this opera! It is worth remembering, always, that a performance of Tannhäuser is entirely experienced in live sound. The large Brown Theater is vibrating with sounds that have no electronic enhancement or help, and that includes everything you hear, from the nearly 90 musicians in the orchestra including onstage trumpets, to the 80 singers in the chorus, to the magnificent solo voices of the principal singers, all of whom have trained their entire lives for the privilege of performing for you. Learning to sing Wagner takes many years of diligent and demanding training.

Wagner (VAHG-ner) had a uniquely epic vision for opera, only matched in history by Mozart and Verdi in their own unique ways. Wagner felt that only ancient stories connected mankind to whatever might be timeless, and he also felt something we can all understand: that too much of the past was being forgotten amidst the forces of modernity. He felt this all of his life, but particularly in the 1840s—imagine what he would feel now.

Tannhäuser represents Wagner’s first successful dive into epic German literature—a 13th century world that is obviously even more remote in our 21st century than in the composer’s 19th. The epic quest for meaning, told through the title character’s struggle between the sensual world of the body and the spiritual world of the mind, is a journey taken by nearly every feeling adult through history. We may not all do it with ancient song contests or papal pilgrimages, but those are symbols, and this is the great secret of Wagner and of all epic literature: not forcing the symbols to be some literal thing they cannot be. Our own journey will not literally be like Tannhäuser’s, but the searching that he feels, and the struggles between the attained and attainable, are as potent to anyone in the 21st century as they were to a knight in a long-lost kingdom. Tannhäuser invites that time-honored beginning of a story: “once upon a time.”