TANNHAUSER
Peter Sellars’s star has shone brightly in the last few years, and he has been called a wunderkind and an enfant terrible. Since the program lists his age as 31 it may be time to drop the “enfant.” Lyric Opera’s production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado allowed Chicago audiences to get a taste of his method. In it he freely combined elements of old productions right out of the warehouse with electric guitars and modern sports cars, while turning the entire seating area of the house into a wide-bodied jet. Whether in Tannhauser, Mikado, or King Lear, Sellars employs a one-size-fits-all method: set it contemporaneously and fill it with various icons drawn from pop culture. Maybe that’s why he’s called iconoclastic, though the word is meant to describe someone who attacks established beliefs, not someone who strives for an order as stultifying as that which he seeks to replace. Last year, in Sellars’s staging of Nixon in China, many critics seemed surprised at his rather conventional approach to the work, though why this should have surprised them is unclear. Deprived of his favorite technique of standing traditional stagings on their heads by putting them in a contemporary setting, Sellars could think up nothing to amaze or shock. In a way, Sellars could be a textbook case for Allan Bloom’s recent best-seller, The Closing of the American Mind. His vision, narrowed to the last few decades of the 20th century, seeks to reduce all experience to the common images available on TV. Instead of expanding the audience’s comprehension of a work by reinterpreting it, he stunts that comprehension by couching the work in the familiar and the mundane.
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The performances of the principals ranged from superb to pathetic. Swedish baritone Hakan Hagegard (best known in this country for his Papageno in Ingmar Bergman’s film of The Magic Flute) was the hit of the show for his performance as Wolfram von Eschenbach. His careful phrasing and clear tones remind you why you go to the theater instead of chucking it and just listening to CDs. The relatively young Hermann, Jan Hendrik Rootering, gave a very pleasing performance, his rich bass-baritone very well cast for this role. He will get even better as his voice darkens in time. Nadine Secunde turned in a solid though not capital Elisabeth. The other minnesingers ranged from the good to the adequate. Marilyn Zschau seemed lacking in the vocal passion and richness that one hopes for in Venus.
