This wonderful documentary records a spectacular act of cultural folly, when David Alden took Tannhauser - a magnificent but potty opera about a knight torn between licky, lust-spilling Venusburg and icky, mediaeval spirituality - to the heart of German conservatism, Bavaria, and threw Freud, Marx and post-modernism in their horrified Nazi-nostalgic faces. The film is full of honesty and insight into backstage life, never stinting on the tensions, barely suppressed hatreds and production inadequacies.
This is framed by a brief skim through Wagneriana, superficial but fun, yielding real heartwrenching ambiguity in the case of an Israeli set-designer who loves the music of a man who loved his dogs more than Jews, and who is working for the people who murdered his family.
