mythology (in an opera based on Germanic myths, no less) seems only to underline Wagner’s belief that the resulting work would succeed the hitherto unsurpassed Greek tragedy as ultimate Drama.18 Similarly, the three Graces of the Paris version call to mind Wagner’s own allegory, found in “The Art-Work,” of three closely entwined sisters representing the coveted fusion of dance, music, and poetry in his anticipated music drama.19 Small wonder that he placed special emphasis on the staging of this opening “dance.” Even in the Dresden version, he considered this “not an easy” task: “to produce the desired chaotic effect undoubtedly requires the most careful artistic treatment of the smallest details.” The director was to follow his scenic directions meticulously and listen intently to the music for additional instructions.20 This equal emphasis on words and music as indicators for stage action is another token of the close audiovisual alignment he coveted.
Moreover, with its temporary abstinence from solo song the Venusberg prefigures a basic premise of Wagner’s early conception of the Gesamtkunstwerk: it enacts the birth of music drama out of dance, the art that in “The Art-Work” Wagner would call “[t]he most realistic” and place at the helm of his three “purely human” (reinmenschliche) arts of dance, poetry, and music.21 As such, the Venusberg scenes exhibit the relationship between dramatic situation, orchestral music, and sung melody (Versmelodie) that Wagner would theorize a few years later in Opera and Drama. Just as the musical melody emerged out of the “speaking-verse” (Sprachvers), he explained, “so have we to picture the dramatic Situation as growing from conditions which mount, before our eyes, to a height whereon the Verse-Melody appears the only fit, the necessary expression of a definitely proclaimed emotion.”22 That is to say, the dramatic situation was to intensify gradually to a point of emotional specificity that naturally required the singing voice for adequate expression. Thus Wagner strove to remedy opera’s perennial quandary regarding the artificiality of onstage singing.
Such a careful medial buildup is indeed precisely what happens in the Venusberg. The set, the lighting, the dancers, and the orchestra’s consistent “sound fields”—its high trills and narrow-ranged chromatic motifs—conjure the sensually charged atmosphere of the fabled mons horrisonus (the horribly sounding mountain), while the brief sirens’ chorus expands this ephemeral sonic architecture more than it adds meaning.23 Only once the dramatic setting has been established visually, viscerally, and acoustically can the orchestra turn to the protagonists. In three brief, markedly distinct, and rhythmically disjointed passages that Wagner left intact in all later versions, the orchestra now reveals the state of affairs between Venus and Tannhäuser (example 1.1). The first passage, a dryly sculpted, marcato forte motif for unison strings, strikingly departs from the previous musical fluctuation; according to the stage directions, it renders Tannhäuser “as though starting from a dream.”24 Next, two solo clarinets in parallel thirds softly and slowly outline a dominant chord with major ninth, their gentle swell floating in uncertain tonal territory, a musical expression of the “caressing” (schmeichelnd) intensity with which Venus pulls Tannhäuser toward herself.25 The strings then burst into a rising eighth-note passage of quickly increasing density in texture, chromaticism, pitch, and dynamics, while Tannhäuser “covers his eyes with his hand as if to hold fast a vision.” Tellingly, it is at this point of introspection—of shielding a mental picture—that the orchestral expressivity grows to such a degree that only the singing voice can continue its trajectory. Over the loud diminished chord that ends this passage like a question mark, Venus vocalizes her anguish by asking her beloved: “Where are your thoughts?” As the voice enters, the orchestra simultaneously recedes into the more traditional role of recitative accompaniment: verbal articulation temporarily takes over from visual, gestural, and orchestral communication.26
EXAMPLE 1.1. Richard Wagner, Tannhäuser, act 1, scene 2: opening of the 1845 “Dresden version.” © By kind permission of SCHOTT MUSIC, Mainz.
In these first fourteen measures of Tannhäuser’s act 1, scene 2, Wagner thus illustrated what he would soon describe as the ideal relationship between drama, gesture, orchestral music, and sung words: a dramatically motivated progression from audiovisual ambient scene setting via increased orchestral expressivity to the inclusion of signifying language. In so doing, he also framed the raising of the singing voice as a natural process. As Wagner explained in Opera and Drama, confronting the audience immediately with a “complete, ready-made melody” would render the latter just as unintelligible as a prefabricated dramatic situation. Only by observing both music and action as something “whose Becoming is ever present to us,” like that of nature, could the spectator comprehend them. Therefore, the Gesamtkunstwerk was to be presented “in continuous organic growth,” lest it turn into a cold “masterpiece of mechanism.”27 The Venusberg scenes, then, do not only trace the evolution of music drama out of dance; they also demonstrate how all its media ought to merge gradually and naturally. And this was a seminal strategy for Wagner, one used to fend off the charge of mechanistic (that is, dramatically unwarranted) effect: it prevented his artwork from declining into the merely technological. Given Wagner’s conviction that his music drama was to effect the regeneration of society through its release from alienating industrial civilization and its return to nature (as discussed in my introduction), the Venusberg emerges as a prime location to experience the craved purification of art from anything mechanical.
The aspiration to return to (albeit idealized) nature was fostered by yet another way in which the Venusberg scenes presage Wagner’s theories. Regarding the scenery and stage setting, he declared, the theater must “be able to depict the living image of nature. . . . The walls of this Scene, which look down coldly and impassively upon the artist and towards the public, must deck themselves with the fresh tints of Nature, with the warm light of ether, to be worthy of taking their share in the human artwork.”28 And nature is where Venus has made her home. Wagner’s stage directions quite literally “deck out” the three visible walls of her grotto: for the background, he envisioned a seemingly endless extension with a blue lake; for its sides, raised shores and rocky ledges; and the entire space was to be illuminated by “rosy light.” For the staging at the Paris Opéra, with its—for Wagner—unprecedented financial and technical possibilities, he expanded these already extensive directions into a detailed dramaturgy of color and light. In addition to the reddish-rosy light (now emanating from below the foreground), some “dim daylight” shines through a rocky opening, while “blue haze” hovers in the distance. Complementing the horizontal blue lake, a “greenish cascade falls the whole height of the grotto,” its white waves “wildly foaming,” and the irregularly shaped ledges are “overgrown with wonderful coral-like tropical vegetation.” The Paris Venusberg, in short, features reds, blues, greens, and whites in various gradations and all possible spatial dimensions. (Only yellow is missing, being reserved for the sunny aboveground world and Tannhäuser’s final redemption.)
Just how unusual such elaborate directions were can be gleaned from Heinrich Marschner’s romantic opera Hans Heiling of 1833. Its prologue is similarly set in a cave governed by a queen—a netherworld from which the title hero flees for the sake of earthly ventures and to which he will eventually return. “Subterranean, widely arched cave, which shows the entrances to several lateral caves, illuminated by reddish dim light” and showing “ragged walls”—thus the initial setting: a mere sketch of (if likely an inspiration for) the sumptuous Venusberg.29 By contrast, Wagner’s directions read like a paint-by-number manual. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that his description of the Venusberg, with all its intricate details and mythic resonances, inspired visual artists for decades to come.30
This continued inspiration must have pleased Wagner, for his call in “The Art-Work” was for the collaboration of true landscape painters, rather than routine stage designers: “What the painter’s expert eye has seen in Nature, . . . he dovetails into the united work
