Tannhauser

Musically, Tannhauser is my favorite of Wagner’s early operas. The theme of liberation that is clear in The Flying Dutchman is here as well but it is more contested by what strikes me as repressive strains. When I listen to this opera I get the sense that Tannhauser spends most of the time under the thumb of external authorities. Yet, it is those moments when he grasps his freedom that are the most memorable.

Conventionally, this opera explores the dilemma between sacred love and profane love, represented by Venus and Elisabeth It is to exemplify this dilemma that Zizek argued that the two should be played by the singer. Tannhauser begins in Venusburg enjoying a life of sensual pleasures but soon pleads with Venus to be allowed to leave to return to the human world. When he returns, Tannhauser runs into some old friends who immediately take him to a song contest. During a banter about the meaning of love, Tannhauser loses it and exposes where he has been – with Venus, getting loved up. He is condemned by his buddies and told to go on a pilgrimage to Rome. Maybe the Pope can redeem him. The journey is a failure but the death of Elisabeth redeems him and Tannhauser is able to die saved.

At the start Tannhauser is in the opposite position as the spinning women and sailors in The Flying Dutchman. While they are being lorded over by the burdens of a labor regimen and their bosses and seek (and achieve) momentary escape through pleasure, Tannhauser is being overwhelmed with the sensual pleasure and seeks a return to the toil of human life. Venus, in her attempts, to keep Tannhauser in Venusburg articulated the sufferings he will face if he returns. Venus leaves the door open for him but even at the moment of his death when he faced damnation, he did not return. For Wagner, I suppose this represents the triumph of sacred love.

I am less offended by this part of the story. Tannhauser expressed his desires by leaving Venusburg and refusing to return. Yet, this is only accomplished through a very clear act of repression on his part. I would ask students listening to this opera: should Tannhauser have repressed these desires? Should the choice have been either/or? 
What does offend me a bit is Tannhauser’s groveling to the demands of his fair-weather friends and his begging for redemption from the Pope (although in defense of the religious theme of this opera, the pilgrim’s song is one of the most beautiful moments in the opera).

I want to look behind Tannhauser’s self-restrain and boot-licking and point out those moments of unrestrained passion and boldness on his part. It seems clear to me that he has the potential to live and entirely liberated life. Although not seen or described on stage, Tannhauser turned on his life and moved to Venusburg. This was clearly an expression of his desires and will. There are also two moments on stage (sung to the same leitmotif), where he expresses his deepest desires to those who have power over him. When he articulates his thanks to Venus but also asks her to let him go and during the contest when he flustered by the lame definitions of love her heard by his comrades, he bolts out, in the most striking phrase in the opera, that one cannot understand love until one experienced Venusburg. His offended friends than send him to the Pope. This, of course, sets of the action of the third act, which strikes me as an endless series of external and internal repression and the before-mentioned boot-licking.

Despite this, I need to stand by my initial point of view. Unlike the spinning women and sailors in The Flying Dutchman Tannhauser cannot blame his bosses for his suffering. He is complicit in his repression (that may indeed be his will). In addition to himself, we can identify four major forces confining Tannhauser’s actions. What breaks my heart is that he showed his ability to kick off all of these forces at various times and in various ways. 
1. The Goddess Venus, who never leaves him alone until his death.
2. The rules of polite society that make it impossible for him to tell his comrades where he has been and reject the entire philosophical foundation of Venusburg.
3. Religious authority, represented by the Pope and the pilgrims, to whom Tannhauser spends the last third of the opera accepting as master.
4. His loyalty to his friends is also part of his undoing. After he breaks the rules of polite society to express his feelings of joy in recalling Venusburg, he almost immediately falls back on the authority of his buddies.
How pathetic.

In The Root is Man, Dwight Macdonald wrote: “It is not difficult to sketch out the kind of society we need to rescue modern man from his present alienation. It would be one whose only aim, justification and principle would be the full development of each individual, and the removal of all social bars to his complete and immediate satisfaction in his work, his leisure, his sex life and all other aspects of his nature. . . . .All ideologies which require the sacrifice of the present in favour of the future will be looked on with suspicion. People should be happy and should satisfy their spontaneous needs here and now. If people don’t enjoy what they are doing, they shouldn’t do it.”