I chat to director Max Hoehn & designer Darko Petrovic about engaged on the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon’s first staging of Wagner’s Tannhäuser for 30 years

Wagner: Tannhäuser – designs by Darko Petrovic, courtesy of Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon

Later this month, the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon can be presenting a brand new manufacturing of Wagner’s Tannhäuser, opening on 23 April 2026. The theatre’s first staging of the work in practically thirty years. And the manufacturing will function position debuts for Jonathan Stoughton (Tannhäuser) and Annemarie Kremer (Venus), plus Allison Oakes as Elisabeth. Graham Jenkins conducts and Max Hoehn directs with set designs by Darko Petrovic, costumes by Nuno Velez, choreography by Isabel Galriça and animations by Amber Cooper-Davies. I not too long ago chatted to Max Hoehn and Darko Petrovic to search out out extra about their plans for the manufacturing.

Darko has labored on Tannhäuser earlier than, for a manufacturing in Cologne. He was happy to be returning to the work, discovering it fascinating and really romantic. For him, it’s nonetheless a sort of thriller, and he thinks of Wagner as intending to maintain a path of thriller in his work. Darko sees their position as one among attempting to unravel the hidden meanings that add weight to the narrative. Cologne used the primary (Dresden) model of the opera and performances weren’t it within the theatre so that they have been in a position to put the additional musicians throughout the auditorium.

While Max has not labored on Tannhäuser earlier than, in 2023 he directed Der fliegende Holländer on the São Carlos in Lisbon additionally with Graham Jenkins conducting. Max feedback on the visceral impression of Wagner’s sound world, as in case you are getting into a cathedral of sound with all these layers. The query for him and Darko is how do you create house and pictures that permit the music breathe. An inherently taxing problem.

Wagner: Tannhäuser – designs by Darko Petrovic, courtesy of Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon

Like a lot of Wagner’s heros, Tannhäuser may be very broken however approachable. With Darko, Max wished to create a psychological house for the piece targeted round Tannhäuser’s divided persona. Max may be very drawn to the tip of the Fin de siècle interval and the German Weimar Republic. He and Darko have used the graphic artwork of the interval because the aesthetic for the designs, so the opera turns into half erotic dream and half nightmare. A lot of the artwork of the Weimar Republic, significantly that which the Nazis labelled as Entartete Kunst, has a really nightmarish, surreal high quality and Max feels that Wagner’s music matches. He and Darko made these selections early on within the course of, earlier than deciding a selected interpretative path.

Darko factors out that when you observe the libretto actually,
then you’ll go improper. Wagner knew this; he was disenchanted with the
scenic setup of his works. With the manufacturing of the Ring at Bayreuth
he felt the outcomes regarded so kitsch and evidently couldn’t bear it. An
summary method works properly as a result of Wagner’s works have been extra superior
than the theatrical actuality of the time. Should you go to King Ludwig’s
castles (Neuschwanstein has wall work by one of many designers from Parsifal),
it’s clear that Wagner’s music was up to now forward of the visible
aesthetic of the time. A sensible set is not going to work, and
Darko feels that it helps the viewers in case you have an interpretation
tailored to Wagner’s visionary world.

Wagner: Tannhäuser – animation by Amber Cooper-Davies., courtesy of Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon

Max and Darko have labored collectively earlier than, and so they deal so much in desires. The music of Tannhäuser makes them really feel the uneasiness that pervades the work. Tannhäuser is an outsider who doesn’t slot in anyplace. They really feel that it is very important have a look at the opera in another way and never with the attention of televisual realism. Opera these days has to supply one thing else moderately than the realism of tv.

Tannhäuser is a taxing piece, and two of the singers (Jonathan Stoughton and Annemarie Kremer) are singing their roles for the primary time. Max feedback that it’s a must to settle for that that is sport, the performers should be high-level athletes in addition to singers. So rehearsals should take this under consideration: you can not merely rehearse continuous. Jonathan Stoughton has been performing Wagner in Mannheim, of their The Ring in One Night, in addition to Lohengrin and Parsifal. Annemarie Kremer has carried out in Tannhäuser earlier than, singing the position of Elisabeth within the French model of the opera!

In Lisbon, they’re performing Wagner’s Vienna model of the opera,
which was created for the final manufacturing that Wagner supervised. [The work premiered in Dresden and Wagner then made some alterations, before creating a new version in French for Paris complete with the Bacchanal in Act One, then this was revised in German for Vienna.]

The Vienna model is near the Paris model with the complete Venusberg music. Max admits that he couldn’t think about directing the
Dresden model as this misses a lot of the Venusberg music. Within the
Lisbon manufacturing, their setting for the Venusberg is grounded within the
Twenties aesthetic with its graphic artwork. And Max feels that this brings a
sense of the darkish interval to come back within the Thirties and Forties. Thus, the
Venusberg turns into the underworld that gave Berlin its fame. For
the Bacchanal they’ve dancers and actors, with an animation
including a dream-like high quality to the staging, although it opens with simply
the music.

Wagner: Tannhäuser – animation by Amber Cooper-Davies., courtesy of Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon

Within the opera Tannhäuser is accused of committing a horrible crime, and Max wished to discover a technique to make this greater than a philosophical idea. In order that in Max and Darko’s Venusberg, Tannhäuser is exploring the homosexual and bisexual nightlife of the time. This permits the viewers to grasp Tannhäuser’s double life in a really express manner. Max factors to the nice heldentenor Max Lorenz who sang the position within the Thirties and Forties.  He had two secret lives as he was homosexual, and married to a Jewish spouse. But he survived. And there are numerous homosexual figures who take inspiration from Tannhäuser, and Max mentions Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Grey and De Profundis. On this latter, Wilde mentions turning to Christ and the aspect of salvation in Tannhäuser inspired Max to make the connection.

There stay questions. What did Wagner think about as an answer for the designs of the opera? What’s the salvation that comes on the finish of Tannhäuser? Maybe Wagner himself didn’t know. Max admits that the ending of the opera continues to be a piece in progress, nonetheless he affirms that there’s going to be a miracle and that Tannhäuser will die. Their problem is to create that!

Each Max and Darko are undoubtedly open to doing additional Wagner operas. Darko loves engaged on Wagner, discovering the works ambivalent: the extra in depth you go, the extra you see how problematic it will get. He describes engaged on Wagner as taking a deep dive into the world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the implications. It helps to focus on specifics, the time interval of the Twenties is a handy technique to interpret his music. Darko admires the composer as a theatre author, however his works are difficult although Darko admits that they’re enormous enjoyable too. Max stays unambivalent in my admiration for a piece like Tannhäuser. He loves the composer’s however there may be darkness too. When he staged Der fliegende Holländer it was as a ghost story, a toddler’s nightmare.

Wagner: Tannhäuser – designs by Darko Petrovic, courtesy of Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon

The world these days has a brief consideration span allied to a slim thought of Wagner based mostly on the political id he got here to be related to. By setting the work within the late Fin de siècle, Max and Darko need to present that Wagner was like a drug, and he was seen was decadent and modernist.