Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg

What's different

The first version, further revised by Wagner in 1847 and 1852 without producing a distinct performing text. Venus is a comparatively short role and the overture is played complete before the curtain rises. Still staged in its own right, usually billed as the "Dresden version".

What's different

Both a revision and a translation, counted here as a revision, the larger of the two facts. Wagner rewrote the Venusberg scene in the harmonic language of Tristan, added the Bacchanal, and cut Walther's contest solo. The ballet was placed in Act I rather than Act II, against Opéra convention; members of the Jockey Club disrupted all three performances and Wagner withdrew the work.

What's different

Wagner's last thoughts: the Paris revisions restored to German, the overture running directly into the Bacchanal, Walther's solo cut. Chosen as primary because it is the text most houses perform. It is often billed as the "Paris version", a label that properly belongs to 1861's music, not this one. Wagner said in 1883 that he still owed the world a Tannhäuser; the work has no settled final form, and choosing this version as primary is a judgement about what a visitor is most likely to have heard, not a claim about authority.