TANNHAUSER E VENERE

Speranza

Much of the score of Tannhäuser belongs to the tradition of Romantic opera that Wagner developed and transcended over the following decades to arrive at the new operatic aesthetic of his mature music dramas. In Tannhäuser, he expands mid-19th-century models of melody, harmony, and form to take his music to unprecedented expressive heights, both in the vocal and orchestral writing. The title character’s dramatic narrative in Act III, which abandons conventional melody in favor of a speech-based structure, directly points towards Wagner’s later works and remains striking in its modernity.