In short, this was a Barnumesque piece of casting—whisk away the little curtain to reveal nothing and nobody. This way to the Egress, and we’ve got your quarter. And this exercise in delicate withholding, this vacuum in the opera’s innards, has been rapturously received, our NYT reviewer even touting it as the best reason to see the show. Just as it brings the progressive lightening of the role of Wolfram, the dismantling of his remaining stature, to its logical conclusion at the vanishing point, so may it write a fitting finis to the latterday critical proclivity for congratulating opera singers for sounding like Lieder singers. And who would want to hear Schubert or Schumann, Brahms or Wolf, sung this way? In the opening lines of the Abendstern song (I can say this only by virtue of having cocked an alert ear to a recording), Gerhaher pulls every faux-sensitive feint in the manual of evasions—meaningless gaps between syllables (the equivalent of an actor sticking in senseless pauses to sound profound); straight passing notes, equally lacking in inflectional purpose, to avoid continuously vibrated, supported tone; a hyperrefined subito piano at “umhullt das Thal,” etc. Anything but singing. My sole forlorn hope is that the whole business will soon be confessed as a hoax, and we’ll all have a good laugh. Though without getting our quarters back, I assume.

Elisabeth. With the opening of Act 2, we were granted some surcease with the entrance of our heroine, in the person of Elza van den Heever. She at last brought some clear, unquavered tone of attractive quality to her music, the upper octave of her range sounding through consistently with a fresh timbre, and the top As and Bs popping out nicely. She also brought with her a likable femininity, enough to suggest that, devout though Elisabeth surely is, she might not be totally immune to the animal spirits displayed, however errantly, by her chosen poet/knight. Her Act 2 pantomiming always showed specific intent, and although I am of two minds about the staging of her search for Tannhäuser among the returning pilgrims in Act 3 (on one hand, it is dramatically logical and strongly motivated; on the other, our attention to it can detract from the full power of the Pilgrims’ Chorus), she did it with touching urgency. The lower octave of her voice being less fully developed, and in consequence the whole instrument falling a bit shy of true Jugendlich calibre, she was less well equipped for the more deeply grounded parts of her plea in the Act 2 finale, and not ideally pure and steady in the “Allmächt’ge Jungfrau.” But this was, uniquely among the principals, a performance that could be enjoyed and respected.

Hermann, Landgraf von Thuringia: Georg Zeppenfeld is an excellent singer whom I’ve very much enjoyed at Carnegie Hall and as Sachs on the Meistersinger video from Dresden. However, as shown by his Pogner and now this performance, his voice is distinctly light in calibre and baritonal in timbre for Wagner bass parts at the Met, and if anything seems to be heading increasingly in that direction. He sang cleanly and artistically, but did not have the weight and dark coloration to make an authoritative impression.