First: The obvious (in German):

Musikalische Leitung: Patrick Lange
Inszenierung: Uwe Eric Laufenberg
Bühne: Rolf Glittenberg
Kostüme: Marianne Glittenberg
Video: Gérard Naziri
Chor: Albert Horne
Licht: Andreas Frank
Dramaturgie: Regine Palmai

Hermann, Landgraf von Thüringen: Young Doo Park
Tannhäuser: Lance Ryan
Elisabeth: Sabina Cvilak
Venus: Jordanka Milkova
Wolfram von Eschenbach: Benjamin Russell
Walther von der Vogelweide: Aaron Cawley
Biterolf: Thomas de Vries
Heinrich der Schreiber: Joel Scott
Reinmar von Zweter: Alexander Knight
Ein junger Hirt: Stella An
Nymphen und Grazien: Charlotte Dambach, Viviana Defazio, Laurin Thomas, Rouven Pabst, Nicholas Bruder
Vier Edelknaben: Eunshil Jung, Hyerim Park, Isolde Ehinger, Daniela Rücker
Chor & Extrachor des Hessischen Staatstheaters Wiesbaden, Statisterie des Hessischen Staatstheaters Wiesbaden, Hessisches Staatsorchester Wiesbaden

First of all: I don’t like Laufenberg, what he did to Parsifal in Bayreuth is a sacrileg. Second: This Tannhäuser isn’t as bad. Third: It need not be Christian Gerhaher to sing a great Wolfram.

Uwe Eric Laufenberg is a director, who has some good ideas, but always fails in making these ideas “round” and consistent in a staging. So his stagings jump from one idea to the next, always leaving us in a stage of “what the fuck does he now want to tell us?”

Tannhäuser is all about the conflict between “true love” and “pure sex”. That alone is something, that would need more than just some naked bodies dancing across the stage. Calixto’s approach (as in his staging, which I saw in Bern, and which will soon be re-staged in Leipzig) was to make this “conflict” visible by having the people, who represent one side of the coin (Wolfram: “true love”, Tannhäuser: “pure sex”) really fight each other on stage. Laufenberg just tried to display the torn emotions by using symbols (“naked girls” and “longing gestures”). This “more clinical” approach then conflicts with the nakedness of the dancers, so it leaves us in a stage of “WTF?.

Lance Ryan also added to this problematic staging. Yes, he’s a powerful actor, but his voice…

But then there was Benjamin Russell, who made us long for his “Ode an den Abendstern” from the first momement he opened his mouth. Thanks for that!

Luckily, Patrick Lange also made a great leader of the orchestra, so in total it was an evening worth spending.