FROM AROUND THE WORLD: RIO DE JANEIRO.(Tannhauser )(Review)

Werner Herzog's production of Wagner's Tannhauser was originally created for the Theatro Municipal in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where it would have had its premiere in 1996. The project was unceremoniously cancelled at an advanced stage of completion, when the culmination of a major economic crisis in Brazil in the critical years following the impeachment of Brazilian president Fernando Collor triggered a rash of rescinded cultural budgets and cuts from federal ministries and municipalities alike, which soon trickled down to the opera house.

Undaunted, Herzog took the production to the Teatro de la Maestranza, in Seville, where in 1997 it finally had its premiere, to great popular acclaim. Since then, the production has been seen in Naples, Madrid and Baltimore, and it is headed to Houston this season.

With Tannhauser absent from the company's main stage since 1953, Rio de Janeiro's Theatro Municipal reclaimed Herzog's production for Brazilian audiences this summer, when the organization's five performances of Wagner's opera were touted as the South American country's most important opera event this year. Led by Swiss conductor Karl Martin, tenors Wolfgang Neumann and Heikki Siukola alternated as Tannhauser, partnered by the Elisabeths of Cheryl Studer and of Brazilian soprano Laura de Souza. A fine ensemble of Brazilian singers served in the supporting roles.

Herzog's visionary production offers a narrative of expressive, lyrical beauty, with clean, abstract elements designed to intensify its poetic visual simplicity. The scenic concept's main codified element is the wind -- whether generated by twenty-eight silent fans or blown onstage by concealed vents and hoses -- creating a constant-motion kinetic energy of heightened romanticism in the characters' wind-swept silk costumes, designed by Franz Blumauer. Of ...