Tannhäuser at Kungliga Operan AB

Tannhäuser lives in everlasting bliss with Venus, the godess of love. But he soon tires of Life in paradise and leaves, returning to Wartburg, to humanity and to his old love, the chaste Elisabeth.

But Wartburg's narrow-mindedness soon gets to him and at the annual singing contest it comes to a head -Tannhäuser sings about Venus instead of the chaste love. He is forced out to seek penance. Love, art and revolution are the leitmotifs of Richard Wagner's early opera about the Minnesinger Tannhäuser who flees the godess of love's artificial paradise of Venusberg (The Mountain of Venus) so he can win his true love's heart through his song. In 2013 the Royal Opera celebrates the 200th anniversary of Wagner's birth by again showing Staffan Valdemar Holm's production of Tannhäuser, which premiered at the Royal Opera in 2002.