Tannhäuser by Joep van Lieshout

In 2007, Joep van Lieshout was invited by German director Sebastian Baumgarten to design the stage for the Tannhäuser production which premiered on the 25th of July 2011 during the prestigious Bayreuther Festspiele in Bayreuth.

Every year the Festspiele produces one new production that will play for five consecutive years. This year it is Tannhäuser, which Josep van Lieshout has been working on together with the artistic team lead by director Sebastian Baumgarten, a renowned enfant terrible of German theatre and Opera. The dramaturge is Karl Hegemann, the musical director is renowoned Thomas Hengelbrock, video-art by Chris Kondek and costumes by Nina von Mechov.

Normally there are three acts and four different sets. The creative team for this production decided to make one set and a Venus mountain that rises up from the floor. The stage design itself doesn't look historical; it is a large factory in which a new version of the Technocrat, 2003 installation is starring. Another element that is different is the aim to make one very dense continuous performance of two-and-a-half hour instead of the traditional one (five hours divided among three acts with two hour-long intermissions), but the intermissions are retained. However the slaves of the Technocrat will continue acting during the pauses.

The Technocrat is an obsessive installation in which the human acts as operator and producer of excrements which are carefully processed in biogas. The biogas is then used for the production of food (no food-no excrements) and alcohol (we want happy people and no revolution). This installation parallels the traditional setting of Tannhäuser: the 'marvellous' Singers Hall in the Wartburg castle. The Wartburg is also a place of power, society, systems and conventions, ethics and morality and stands quite opposite the Venus mountain where the individual hedonistic freedom rules. The conflict of Tannhäuser is about choosing between the Apollonian and the Dionysian. At the end Tannhäuser is not able to find either of them.

Tannhäuser will be performed on August 1, 7, 13, 19 and 25 in 2011, and for another five consecutive years in Bayreuth.

Tannhäuser Opera, Bayreuther Festspiele, Bayreuth Germany, Summer 2011
Conductor: Thomas Hengelbrock
Director: Sebastian Baumgarten
Stage Design: Joep van Lieshout
Photo: Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath