Bayreuth Festival: A Tannhäuser that goes beyond the love-sex dilemma | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

Bayreuth Festival: A Tannhäuser that goes beyond the love-sex dilemma | Lifestyle News, The Indian Express

By Deutsche Welle |Published: July 25, 2019 2:57:17 pm

Bayreuth Festival: A Tannhäuser that goes beyond the love-sex dilemma

The Bayreuth Festival opens with Richard Wagner's "Tannhäuser." Director Tobias Kratzer told DW how he sees the play as being more about artistic aspirations than the Romantic conflict between pure and profane love.

The 1845 romantic opera revolves around Tannhäuser, a knight and celebrated minstrel who disappears from the court to spend time with Venus, the Roman goddess of lust, at the forbidden Venusberg.

Richard Wagner revolutionized the way that music is staged in a theatre, and in order to realize his ideas, he created his own theatre in Bayreuth, which has since turned into an annual pilgrimage site for Wagner fans.