Amfortas – Jochen Schmeckenbecker
Gurnemanz – Kwangchul Youn
Parsifal – Christopher Ventris
Klingsor – Boaz Daniel
Kundry – Anja Kampe
Titurel – Ryan Speedo Green
Squires – Rachel Frenkel, Miriam Albano, Wolfram Igor Dentl, Peter Jelosits
First Knight of the Grail – Benedikt Köbel
Second Knight of the Grail – Marcus Pelz
Flowermaidens – Maria Nazarova, Lydia Rathkolb, Rachel Frenkel, Hila Fahima, Mariam Battistelli, Stephanie Houtzeel
Voice from Above – Zoryana Kushpler
Alvis Hermanis (director, set
designs)
Kristīne Jurjāne (costumes)Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)
Ineta Sipunova (video)
Silvia Platzek (assistant set designer)
Children of the Vienna State Opera Opera School
Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Martin Schebesta)
Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera
Semyon Bychkov (conductor)
Parsifal continues its strange career in the opera
house, both its ‘home’, Bayreuth, and beyond – the ‘beyond’ Cosima Wagner
haplessly, hilariously attempted to prevent with her Lex Parsifal. (Note to pious New York Wagnerians: next time you appeal
to the Master’s alleged intentions, consider your house’s role in confounding
them.) Wagner’s desire, as expressed to Ludwig II, to protect the work from ‘a common operatic career’ is understandable.
Indeed, Pierre Boulez, a highly distinguished interpreter and critic of the
work as well as compositional successor, understood this very well when he
approvingly noted Wagner loathing a system in which ‘opera houses are … like
cafés where … you can hear waiters calling out their orders: “One Carmen! And one Walküre! And one Rigoletto!”’ Bayreuth
has veered from the very best, indeed the very greatest, in Stefan
Herheim, to the very worst, with Uwe
Eric Laufenberg’s festival of Islamophobia, bizarrely released on DVD
whilst its predecessor languishes in the (virtual) vaults. I do not think I saw
Vienna’s previous Parsifal, directed
by Christine Mielitz; at any rate, I have no recollection of it. This first
revival of Alvis Hermanis’s production had me wondering, however, whether it
could have been any more vacuous.
Hermanis would not be my choice
to direct anything, whether for his avowed Islamophobia – how he must have
cursed Laufenberg for getting there first – or for
the limitations of his craft, such as it may be. His Salzburg
Liebe der Danae combined the two to an uncommon degree.
I am astonished any theatre or opera house would still enlist his services,
following his storming
out of Hamburg’s Thalia Theatre on account of its having extended a welcome
to refugees. What we have here, at seemingly great expense, is a series of
impressive designs – with which, to be fair, he is credited too – and very
little that could really be considered a production at all. There is just
enough – again, to be fair – to permit one’s mind to work, to posit connections
between what one sees, essentially tableaux
from Vienna 1900. Yet, whilst I am certainly in favour of us all having to do
some mental lifting, I cannot, hand on heart, say that my psychoanalytical
thoughts had their roots in what I saw, whereas they unquestionably have done
in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s outstanding Berlin staging.
The conceit,
if we may call it that, is that two Wagners, Richard and Otto, shared the same,
well, surname. Therefore the action takes place at the ‘Wagner Spital’ – alias
Otto’s Steinhof psychiatric hospital. I wondered whether there might be a nod
to Nietzsche and/or Thomas Mann on Parsifal,
here, but suspect myself, perhaps unusually, of undue charity. A model of the
human brain grows larger, amidst some books on shelves: ‘Durch Mitleid wissend…’?
There is a half-hearted attempt, which nevertheless made me think, at
pschyoanalysis, Kundry on Klingsor’s couch, in the second act, although it
quickly becomes unclear, rather than fruitfully ambiguous, who, if anyone,
amongst the characters, is analysing whom. Bits of Wagner’s (Richard’s) poem
are flashed up above the stage from time to time; having hired someone for
video, it must, presumably, have been necessary to find something for her to
do. (Not her fault in the slightest, I hasten to add.) As for the final scene,
in which a few Vienna 1900 celebrities join the chorus, bedecked in the most
absurd winged helmets you will ever have seen, even as devotees of ‘Against Modern
Opera Productions’, I simply gave up. The stage direction itself might as well
have been a wet Wednesday’s revival of Otto Schenk.
Fortunately,
musical matters were considerably better. The orchestra sounded better than I
have heard it in Wagner for some time. It will always play well for conductors
it likes: I can therefore only presume that, quite rightly, it likes Semyon
Bychkov. The seamlessness of Bychkov’s account showed that, once again, as in,
say, his Lohengrin,
his Tannhäuser,
and his Tristan,
he both discerns and can communicate the Wagner melos. Some passages were thrillingly dramatic, not least an
overwhelming close to the second act. Others seemed, perhaps, to tread water a
little, but that may just have been my difficulty in dissociating what I heard
from what I saw. No one, however, could justly have been disappointed with what
(s)he heard here, those hallowed Vienna strings not far from the top of their golden
game.
However,
rather to my surprise, I found Christopher Ventris slightly disappointing in
the title role – certainly no match for his 2008
self for Herheim and Daniele Gatti. Ventris can still sing the role, often
beautifully, but his stage presence seemed almost tired, whether compared with
ten years ago in the same role or indeed with his Bayreuth
Siegmund last summer. Perhaps he just needed stronger direction; one can
certainly sympathise. Anja Kampe’s Kundry proved thrilling, increasingly so as
time went on, her laughter at Christ erotically chilling. Kwangchul Youn’s Gurnemanz has gathered
wisdom over the years; this may have been the finest I have heard from him,
utterly at ease in the role, without taking a single note or word for granted.
At times, I found Jochen Schmeckenbecker’s Amfortas a little underpowered, even
monochrome, but again there was much to be savoured from his way with the text,
both verbal and musical. Boaz Daniel’s Klingsor had one wishing, as so often with
this role, that it were at least a little longer. Choral singing, from boys,
men, and women alike was excellent: clear, transparent, and yet weighty, having
my mind flit back to Wagner’s work in Dresden, whether on his own, strange Liebesmahl der Apostel, or Palestrina’s Stabat Mater (which he edited, less
interestingly than one might have hoped). There was, then, redemption to be
had, but in a strictly musical sense.
