# Tannhauser vs Hollander



## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

There seems to be a lot of similarities between these two operas. In each, the protagonist is a lost soul, is seeking redemption, has his hopes crushed, then seeks to return to his former ways, Tannhauser to Venus and the Hollander to another 7 years at sea. But at the last minute both are saved by a woman (we are taking the redemption ending for the Hollander). Both even have their songs of lament, Tannhauser near the end as he recounts his pilgrimage and how he was not given redemption, the Hollander near the beginning as he recounts his eternal days at sea. Both are under a curse, Tannhauser in that the Pope says he is forever damned, the Hollander in that he is cursed to sail the seas for eternity.

Am I making too much of this, or is there something to it?


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

I think you are right, these were obviously themes that fascinated and interested Wagner. The idea of the lone, tortured soul of the outsider figure is a common literary trope and Wagner saw this is being part of the condition of the artist (as did many others). There is something of the same character in Wotan as well. The twist there is that his redemption is his own annihilation. Kundry is a female variant of this type of character.

N.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I'll expand on Conte's comments to say that the theme of the outsider hoping and striving to redeem a tragically flawed existence pervades every one of Wagner's operas from _Dutchman_ to _Parsifal,_ even the comedy _Die Meistersinger_ (although in that work the element of tragedy is softened into the melancholy renunciation of Hans Sachs, who acts out his pursuit of redemption through the advancement and civilizing of the wild young genius Walther).

I find that Wagner's musical expression of the suffering of his yearning, questing alter-egos pervades his scores and gives his mature work its most essential coloring. There are no expressions of psychic pain in music quite comparable to the music of Tristan's self-lacerating delirium in Act 3 of his opera, at least until _Parsifal,_ where the pain of the guilt-ridden, impotent Amfortas mixes astonishingly with the ecstatic music of the Grail in a psychic/erotic/spiritual amalgam that puts the opera in a category of its own.

Among opera composers, only Puccini portrays suffering with comparable intensity (and perhaps only in _Butterfly_), but with a different, more pathetic quality. The suffering of Puccini's heroines (and it's mainly his women, whereas with Wagner it's mainly the men) is in their sad victimization, and for me this makes it almost too heartbreaking. Wagner's protagonists stand more in the tradition of classical tragedy; they suffer because of their own flawed natures and prior actions, and their self-aware striving for redemption, even when based on illusion as Tristan's is, gives them a kind of heroism.


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