How do you choose? On the one hand, the sensual love of Venus and the charms of her magical domain, the Venusberg. On the other, the Christian love of Elisabeth in the virtuous environment of the Wartburg and its poets. Having succumbed to the former, Tannhäuser will be redeemed, beyond death, by the second. After Parsifal (2023) and Tristan and Isolde (2024), the Grand Théâtre de Genève continues its Wagnerian adventure while spinning the thread of grand opera. For Tannhäuser, the work of a 32-year-old Wagner – and already featuring his favourite themes of errancy and redemption through love – us brimming over with romanticism and the influence of Grand Opéra. In it, the individual confronts his aspirations as to the community in a miraculous balance between vocal stasis – from Tannhäuser’s ‘Hymn to Venus’ to Wolfram’s ‘Romance to the Star’, by way of Elisabeth’s grand entrance aria – and powerful chorus scenes: after The Huguenots (2020), La Juive (2022) and Don Carlos (2023), Tannhäuser represents a new operatic summit in the Grand Opéra genre for the Chœur du Grand Théâtre de Genève.

Due to a health problem, director Tatjana Gürbaca was unfortunately forced to cancel her participation in the production, and is replaced by German director Michael Thalheimer, whose Geneva credits include Parsifal (2023) and Tristan und Isolde (2024). Having already collaborated with set designer Henrik Ahr and costume designer Barbara Drosihn, Michael Thalheimer will be able to work closely with the original team on this production.
Their Tannhäuser works less on the classic opposition of the worlds – Venus versus Wartburg – than on their porosity. Is not the Wartburg a society of artists, open to the questioning of bourgeois society? Yet creation can lead to chaos: Tannhäuser’s revelation of a utopia experienced on the Venusberg is intolerable for the civilised world of the Wartburg, causing not scandal but destruction. And like so many pilgrims on the human journey, its devastated citizens set off in search of a new horizon… With set designer Henrik Ahr and costume designer Barbara Drosihn, the stage direction brings a vision to life using a concept of evolving scenography.
The Venusberg, a mental space synthesising Tannhäuser’s experiences, will be a perfectly circular piece of stage machinery which gradually opens up onto the Wartburg. Similarly, the costumes will move gradually from dreamlike to chaotic, to being stripped away. Mark Elder, doyen and grand seigneur among British conductors, will lead a cast of attested Wagnerians. Daniel Johansson (Parsifal at the GTG in 2023) takes the title role opposite young British soprano Jennifer Davis as Elisabeth, and Venus sung by mezzo Victoria Karkacheva – a brilliant Charlotte in the recent Werther at Milan’s La Scala. Returning to the Grand Théâtre stage after his recent Posa (Don Carlos, 2023), baritone Stéphane Degout will lend the nobility of his singing and acting to Wolfram von Eschenbach, Tannhäuser’s poet friend and rival.