Proms 2013: Tannhäuser/BBC SSO/Donald Runnicles - music review

Conductor Donald Runnicles may not have Barenboim’s profile, but he is no mean Wagnerian says Nick Kimberley

This Proms premiere of Wagner’s Tannhäuser didn’t quite generate the hullabaloo raised by Daniel Barenboim’s Ring cycle a week earlier, yet there was no feeling of “after the Lord Mayor’s show”. While conductor Donald Runnicles may not have Barenboim’s profile, he is no mean Wagnerian. Similarly, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra is not an opera-house band but it offered grandeur, subtlety and, when required, a certain healthy vulgarity.

At three hours long, Tannhäuser is a mere bagatelle beside the Ring cycle. Its subject — the conflict between flesh and spirit — is resonant enough. Its treatment, though, is stolidly undramatic, and Justin Way’s rudimentary staging offered little beyond operatic ham-dram, leaving the singers to their own devices. In the punishing title role, Robert Dean Smith, as strong at the opera’s end as at its start, had the notes, but his singing and characterisation were prosaic.

As usual, the female characters are sacrificed on the horns of the hero’s existential dilemma. Heidi Melton’s Elisabeth had a sweet vibrato to match the character’s purity but with singing as sensuous as Daniela Sindram’s, a modern sensibility is likely to find her rival Venus the more attractive figure.

Catch up on iPlayer. Proms run until September 7 (0845 401 5040,