Why Tannhäuser?

I play violin in the Chippewa Valley Symphony, and we performed Wagner’s Tannhäuser Overture for our holiday concert this year. I didn’t get it. Other years we’ve played many movements from the Nutcracker Suite. (We just performed three of the dances this year.) We’ve played parts of Handel’s Messiah. We programmed festive dances one year. But why Tannhäuser? It didn’t fit.

In one rehearsal Nobu, our conductor, admitted that it was a bait-and-switch, or rather a bait-and-add. Draw the audience in to hear holiday music and a local artist. Then give them a real symphonic experience with one of our selections.

I still didn’t think it fit.

Then we got on stage. We tuned. Notes of Wagner filled the air. It worked. The emotions were right. This is what Christmas is about.

The opera Tannhäuser is about a man who seeks love in the wrong place, in the castle of Venus. Afterwards, he desires forgiveness for these sins. He joins pilgrims on their journey to Rome, but even the pope cannot forgive him. The pope declares it would be just as probable that the pope’s staff sprout leaves as it would be for Tannhäuser to obtain forgiveness.

The opera ends with Tannhäuser’s death. He asks a young lady to pray for him. And the pope’s staff sprouts leaves.

Yes, God can offer us forgiveness for things that no church can absolve. Religion in itself cannot wash away our sins, but Jesus can. He was born on earth 2,000 years ago to take the punishment for our sins so that God can be just in declaring us not guilty. That is Christmas.

“But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.” Galatians 4:4-5 NKJV