For me this work has always been by far the most difficult of Wagner’s works to access - indeed one of the most difficult period I think. Even now I am not at all sure that I fully ‘get’ it or can always listen to all of it with unalloyed pleasure and understanding. There is something about the shifting and chromatic harmonies that is disconcerting and it makes me feel the ground is always shifting beneath my feet. There is also, to me, what seems like a morbid emphasis on physical pain. I am really not sure why I get thois sense - is it the harmony?-but it is defintely there - and more so than spiritual pain which is what many commentators talk very largely about..
I am wriitng each group of comments act by act as I have found myself making a lot of notes as it progressed and I want to organise them as soon as I can after I make them.
Act 1:
Grippingly impressive from the opening note to the closing - even Gurnemanz’s notorious monologue. He, incidentally, was much younger than normally shown and for the vast majority of Act 1 confined to a wheelchair - visual metaphor for a crippled organisation? The style of production is minimalist to the (almost) extreme; an empty stage, with a sand coloured floor and a white curved wall at the back and sides down which at the start trickled some lines of a red liquid/blood. Costumes matched this - being modern and of very neutral colours. Only Parsifal stood out with a black top and a more modern style - sweatshirt and emphatic trainers. He is thus clearly established as an outsider - and a somewhat boorish loutish one as well, particularly in his reaction to the killing of the swan while the mocking and aggressive reactions of the knights reaffirmed their degeneracy - of which more shortly.
During the prelude the stage was revealed with a brillian white light focused on the centre which gradually expanded to take up much of the area and then diminished. This was used as the image for the grail at the end of the act and it was noticeable, both there and in the prelude how exquisitely calibrated the light was with the ebb and flow, rhythmic and harmonic, of the music. During nthe prelude was saw, breifly, Kundry and Amfortas in a passionate embrace - a foreshadowing of what we are later told in G’s narration and perhaps an allusion to Parsifal’s encounter with her in Act 2.
Once the action started, as suggested above, the knights are seen as an unfocused and degenerate group; all are involved with themselves or a few others, they are obsessed with technology (many have mobile devices which some also use to take Instagram-style selfies against the backdrop of the stage) They are focused on themsleves not the grail - and the dark glasses most wore were a striking visual touch, standing out due to the almost colourless minimalism of the stage picture. At the end of Act 1, during the ceremony of the grail, while they all came together as a group, the movements were mechanical as if they were just going through the motions - and here again, the matching of the movements (in groups walking in a circle and then moving on the spot) were beautifully calibrated to the music. They were at this time a group, a society, but one with no real focus and merely going through the motions of a meaningless ritual.
In the first act the knights, in pairs, had boys dressed in white whom they carefully tended - feet and body washing - but there was a tremendous moment when, to show the swan killing, Parsifal came on to the stage and threw a bucket of blood over one of the boys. A tremendous shock, not least visually, that did seem to bring the knights together - well, for a few moments anyway. The tending to the swan and slow swaddling of him continued until the transformation sceen and it was noticeable that Kundry was closely involved in this and took the lead - not so much the knights. Again, another hint of her future redemption? She was trying to be good.
The transformation sceen was very simpyl and strikingly staged with the knights gradually coming together in pairs (one of whom was always crippled and could not move easily) and gradually forming a circular procession around the stage, each pair inserting themsleves in front of Gurnemanz and Parsifal.
During the actual ceremony and the final revelation of the grail, the knights, again, were more self-absotbed and only periodically a part of the ceremony/ritual, this again maontaining the idea of they being a degenerate group whose actions have lost their meaning. It was well shown by the way they were all mostly lookng in different directions rather than being focused on the grail. I was very intrigued by the female figure who appeared towards the end of teh ceremony - I think the same person who played Kundry but whether she was meant to represent her, or an aspect of her I am not sure…
By the end of the act it did seem that Parsifal had ben gradually involved in the scene - he was visually focused on all that was happening - but, as he showed when questioned by G in the closing moments, m]had no understanding of it. He ‘had the experience/but missed the meaning’ to quote Eliot.
Act 2:
Surprisingly somewhat less gripping. Klingsor is young-looking (cf Gurnemanz) and to me came across as more sympathetic than usual through the pain, emotional and physical, that he showed - almost as if he was a parallel with Amfortas in suffeirg from an incurable wound of both body and mind.
There are more colours - the stage was washed in a yellow light for much of the act and the vivid blood smears on the white backdrop remained there.
Parsifal was very effectively acted in this scene; as in the first Act he was able to convey clumsily boyish enthusiasm and naivite without the embarrassment factor that singers invariably hit when trying to convey this aspect of the character - perhaps the most difficult one and similar to that mode that is required for Siegfried in Act 1.
Kundry remained superb - a wonderfully vividly sung and acted performance (and the idea of having her voice as that of the spirit at the end of Act 1 was very smart and another subtle hint as to her final redemption). Both this act and the first the director has managed to constantly and subtly refer to this central idea throughout. And at the end of the act I definitely had the sense that her anger was because she had not managed to gain redemption from Parsifal not just that she had failed to seduce him; is this an unusual idea? Her attempted suicide in the closing bars was certainly something new to me. Her clothes in this act remained in the palette of the knights in Act 1 - except fo the moment when she pulled on Parsifal’s black top as a dress while narrating his early life. Much of the time in their interactions I had the sense that this was a therapy session for them both - and the use of the mirror by Parsifal to Kundry was striking - just after ‘die Wunde’ climax.
The Flower Maidesn were very well done - their vividly colourful dresses providing a marvellous and appropriate contrast rather than the being obviously sexy. Here they are youthful, giggling and excited young girls, reacting to Parsifal rather like fans to a pop star. But I was baffled by the four older women who were on stage from the start, one holding a baby and to of whom were used to bring on the (massive) spear at the end of the act. Did not understand their role/symbolism…
Act 3:
So, the final act. The set is essentially what it was at the end of Act 2 – the garden of the defeated, in this production, dead, Klingsor. The back wall is now clear and the light a slightly chilly blue/green colour. Kundry is awoken, intriguingly, by Gurnemanz kissing her and her wrists are bound after her attempted suicide at the end of Act 2. I think that like Amfortas, she wants to die but cannot until she is redeemed. She also comforts Gurnemanz when he tells of the death of Titurel – again another sign of her redemptive qualities and her central importance in this view of the opera.
When Parsifal – the singer here as in the preceding acts, more than doing justice to the part with a sweetly powerful tone – enters, he is carrying the massive spear just as if he were Christ carrying the cross –and he stumbles several times. Kundry helps him – again a sign of her desire for redemption and the reverse of what she did when she mocked Christ carrying the cross and so was cursed. She is a significant albeit silent participant in this final act.
When the scene changes to the knight’s hall, the lighting does too and three older women whom we saw in Act 2 associated with the Flower Maidens and one of whom handed the spear to Parsifal also re-appear – somewhat bafflingly tbh; I did not understand why this happened.
At this stage the knights are in total disarray – their clothes are more casual-looking, there is fighting amongst them for some of the random objects left behind and the mocking of Amfortas is a brutal mob attack with A being made to carry a sign saying ‘murderer’. There are no trickles of blood on the walls which is also a cause of tension for - them,this being a representation of the Grail?
When Parsifal returns with the spear, Amfortas is stabbed with it (his death being his redemption) and Kundry ecstatically smears blood back on the back wall before achieving death as a successful suicide – as suggested before, she, like Amfortas, longs for death but it cannot come until redemption – and in the closing moments of the opera, Gurnemanz, powerfully, tries to join their two hands as they live, blood-covered, at the front of the stage. Strikingly, Parsifal, now dressed in Titurel’s armour now stands commandingly at the back of the stage as the light of the grail shines once again, but he seems to be the object of worship of the knights; interesting.
So a very thought-provking production of a really demanding work. I am not at all sure I ‘saw’ everything there but then I think I probabaly need to know Parsifal better before coming to a radical production such as this. But it was wonderfully good, musically and dramatically!
Amfortas Christoph Pohl
Titurel Markus Suihkonen
Gurnemanz Stefan Kocan
Parsifal Erin Caves
Klingsor Kay Stiefermann
Kundry Tanja Ariane Baumgartner
A Voice from Above Tanja Ariane Baumgartner
Conductor Cornelius Meister