Wagner's "Tannhauser" opens with a famous/infamous Bacchanalia. It's
Venusberg, and the Goddess of Love (ne Holda, Goddess of Spring) is
entertaining her lover, Tannhauser, in a (usually) wild orgy involving
nymphs, sirens, and other ladies of the night. When the San Francisco
Opera's new production - General Manager David Gockley's first for the
company - begins its run tonight in the War Memorial, what will
Venusberg look like in Graham Vick's direction, Paul Brown's design?

If the Opera listens to the author of its own program notes, Thomas May,
the orgy should be quite free of "cheap eroticism." Cautions May (in
http://sfopera.com/opera.asp?o=251&i=119):

"The opera's opening scenes have been known to inspire unfortunate (and
justly parodied) exaggerations, all in an attempt to establish the realm
of Venus as distinct from the world of penitential pilgrims as well as
that of chivalric decorum - an aim already magnificently accomplished
in Wagner's score.  But cheap eroticism and a kind of corybantic, danced
Kama Sutra - where the choreographic becomes merely graphic - miss the
point in their very overemphasis."

The point will be made or missed in just a few hours.

Janos Gereben
www.sfcv.org
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