Wagner: Tannhauser

David Alden’s manufacturing of Wagner’s grand romantic opera was recorded on the Nationwide Theatre in Munich, with Bayerische Staatsoper, in September 1994. Shot over three days by main opera director Brian Giant, this recording advantages from the perfect technical circumstances made potential by a closed session. Alden, probably the most iconoclastic interpreters of classical opera, stirs up the visionary, erotic, and archetypal parts in Wagner’s work. The chilly, forbidding side of the stylized and predominantly monochrome units and costumes by Roni Toren and Buki Shiff manifests the strait-jacket of custom from which Tannh+¤person seeks to free himself on this highly effective opera.