Portrait of the Artist: Francesca Zambello's New Tannhäuser Production Transports Wagner's Medieval Tale to Turn-of-the-Century America

Francesca Zambello’s new HGO staging of Wagner’s Tannhäuser transports the tale from medieval Germany to turn-of-the-century America. Read about the director’s concept for the production and the inspirations behind the designs.

I believe every individual possesses an artistic spirit, a desire to create something of value for themselves and others. Often in opera, artist-protagonists are set against the backdrop of a fractured world, showcasing the belief in one person’s potential to create change through art. In our production, Tannhäuser is a member of an austere religious community that has rejected the excesses of the Gilded Age. He travels and is intrigued by the boldness and creativity he encounters in ‘Venusberg,’ set in a progressive New York salon where wealthy artists gather and challenge norms.”

—FRANCESCA ZAMBELLO, TANNHÄUSER DIRECTOR

In Zambello’s staging, the goddess Venus is portrayed as a socialite in the pattern of Mabel Dodge Luhan (1879-1962), an influential patron of early modernist painters and writers. In the 1910s, Luhan hosted a weekly salon at her Greenwich Village apartment, where artists and intellectuals met to discuss revolutionary ideas.

The Wartburg community is represented in Zambello’s production by a religious group reminiscent of American Protestant sects, such as the Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterites. Peter J. Davison’s set for the Wartburg singing hall resembles a Quaker meeting house, while costume designer Constance Hoffman has outfitted the men’s chorus in traditional Quaker headgear, known as “wideawake hats.”

S Katy Tucker’s projection designs are indebted to the Hudson River School, a group of American landscape artists who were active around the time Wagner composed Tannhäuser in 1845. Influenced by German Romanticism, painters such as Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran captured the untamed wilderness of New York State and the western frontier. Tucker and her team create the projections “using a blend of filmed and rights-free footage, layered to achieve a painterly look.”