Tannhäuser. Vocally, the performance did not consistently rise to the level one had hoped for. Eric Cutler, in the title role, struck us as somewhat one-dimensional over long stretches. He sang with considerable commitment and sustained the part with stamina, but his Tannhäuser lacked real interpretative differentiation. This was already evident in the Venusberg scene of Act I. In “Dir töne Lob!”, in particular, the contrast was striking: the harp played its introduction and accompanying figures with extraordinary delicacy and beauty, shaping the music with a refinement that seemed to open up precisely the sensuous and inward expressive world the passage requires. All the more disappointing, then, was the tenor’s entry, which seemed comparatively blunt and effortful, as though little had been taken from the atmosphere the orchestra had so carefully prepared. Sheer effort and volume often appeared to count for more here than tonal nuance, verbal inflection or any real shaping of the musical line.
