WNO’s new Parsifal, a co-
production with Scottish Opera, is little short of a triumph: it blends
a remarkable musical experience with thoughtful direction which together
show obvious respect (or even reverence) for Wagner’s conception of
the work as bühnenweihfestspiel, a festival play for the
consecration of a stage.
Director/Designer Silviu Purcarete
is concerned with the tension between truth and illusion that he finds
in the Parsifal libretto, both in terms of staged action and
set. He is equally concerned with Time, in the sense of time’s passage
and effects on human experience, but also with Time in another sense
too: how ‘timeless’ vision sustains human ideals.
Within these frameworks, Purcarete’s
Gurnemanz (portrayed as a young man for once) represents the discernment
of ‘truth’ while Kundry and Klingsor are deception and illusion. Thus
the self-evident ‘truth’ of Amfortas’s guilty suffering is emphasised
in this production at both physical and psychological levels; Amfortas
is swathed in bandages throughout the whole work. Kundry and Klingsor,
on the other hand, are the prisoners and servants of illusion in equal
measure and Kundry is the more afflicted. Illusion claims her so firmly
that even her redeeming service to the Grail Community is debased; her
well-intended gift to Amfortas of balm from Arabia is actually useless
sand.
Purcarete’s set for Act I is relentlessly
cheerless, as if to point up the effects of a lost, sustaining truth
on Montsalvat. The Squires awake to Gurnemanz’ call from uncomfortable
hospital-style beds in a large room otherwise unfurnished except for
an enormous statue of a Knight (rather like Rodin’s ‘Thinker’) which
may be of Amfortas himself. When Amfortas arrives for his morning bathe,
he lies bandaged on a hospital trolley and only the sight of the Swan
and the morning sunlight provide hope for him. After Parsifal has killed
the Swan (shown only as a few feathers and some blood) the bleak room
transforms into the Grail Hall. The Grail is portrayed as a glass of
water that turns blood-red as the ceremony proceeds. Parsifal is bored,
falls asleep and is evicted.
Act II has Klingsor’s garden as
a theatre, something between cabaret and brothel. A large mirror, centre-stage,
acts as a scrying-glass while simultaneously allowing the voyeuristic
audience to watch itself watching the ‘performance.’ The Flower Maidens
at first are beautiful seductive women but like everything else in Klingsor’s
realm they are illusions: in reality they are lifeless skeletons over
which the Spear hangs horizontal all the time.
Klingsor’s domination over Kundry
is total, even to the extent that he dresses as she does. His hair is
long, his robe is the same red velvet. Kundry is seen to exist only
as Klingsor’s slave, only to do his exactly his bidding, while the ambiguity
of the motives behind his self-castration is also referenced obliquely
by his clothing. Kundry’s taunting about this, ‘Bist du keusch?’ – ‘Are
you chaste?’ is answered and yet ignored simultaneously by the ‘fashion
statement.’
The only point at which Purcarete’s
symbolism feels a touch heavy-handed is when Kundry first confronts
Parsifal. She appears to him as a giant figure, towering over him, perhaps
much as a mother appears to a young child, while she recounts his childhood
and his mother’s heartbreak. This could represent some kind of Freudian
flashback in Parsifal’s consciousness of course or maybe it’s another
illusory ‘theatrical’ trick by Klingsor: it does smack of rubbing the
hero’s nose in it a bit, but then Klingsor would do that, wouldn’t he?
Mercifully, Kundry is her normal size for the seduction however.
A sense of reverence for both
music and libretto really does pervade this production and is almost
tangible from the opening bars of the Prelude. Vladimir Jurowski , fresh
from his successes as Music Director of this year’s Glyndebourne Summer
Festival, mentions in his excellent programme note, ‘Here Time becomes
Space: a Parsifal Meditation,’ two things that go some way to explaining
this. The first of these is his account of a sudden realisation during
a train journey that there can be a ‘weird….sweetness. (in)..pain caused
by love, and even a masochistic wish for the pain not to cease,’ while
he was thinking about the winter landscape through which he was passing
at the time, and which brought to his mind the minor version of the
‘Last Supper’ theme in Parsifal. His interpretation of the music
in this performance reflected that sense with an extraordinary beauty,
the like of which is (sadly) too rarely heard in Wagner performances
these days.
The second aspect of Jurowski’s
understanding of Parsifal that seems extremely significant in
the light of Purcarete’s production has to do once again with Time.
Jurowski explains how Wagner felt that the ‘Last Supper’ theme (the
first in the Prelude) does not appear in the present: rather it is a
reminiscence of the past. If I understand him rightly, Jurowski seems
to be saying here that there is a special interplay between ‘passing
time’ and ‘timelessness’ in Parsifal which is different from
all other music and which accounts for the ‘spiritual’ quality of the
music, when it is grasped by performers. I hope that this is what he
meant to imply: it is certainly how I experienced the performance.
The singing in this production
is almost uniformly excellent throughout. Alfred Reiter, although younger
than many people who sing Gurnemanz, has great command of his voice
and conveyed a wholly appropriate sense of dignity throughout. Sara
Fulgoni, as Kundry coped admirably with all aspects of this demanding
role: her singing was refined, powerful and once again perfectly controlled,
a splendid achievement. Equal honours however are due to Robert Hayward
( Amfortas,) Donald Maxwell (Klingsor) and Ian Paterson (Titurel) all
of whom were in tremendous voice and brought true conviction to their
roles. Stephen O’Mara as Parsifal coped perfectly adequately: his is
a rather light voice however (where have all the Heldentenors
gone?) and there was a distinct sense of strain about him by the end
of Act III. The WNO chorus and orchestra (always a pleasure in themselves)
responded nobly (there is no other word) to Vladimir Jurowski’s direction
helping create a truly extraordinary musical event.
Bill Kenny
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