Parsifal, Deutsche Oper, 8 March 2024

Amfortas – Jordan Shanahan
Titurel – Andrew Harris
Gurnemanz – Günther Groissböck
Parsifal – Klaus Florian Vogt
Kundry – Irene Roberts
Klingsor – Joachim Göltz
Knights of the Grail – Patrick Cook, Youngkwang Oh
Esquires – Sua Jo, Arianna Manganello, Kieran Carrel, Chance Jonas-O’Toole
Flowermaidens – Flurina Stucki, Sua Jo, Arianna Manganello, Hye-Young Moon, Mechot Marrero, Marie-Luise Dreßen
Voice from Above – Marie-Luise Dreßen

Director – Philipp Stölzl
Co-director – Mara Kurotschka
Set designs – Conrad Moritz Reinhardt, Philipp Stölzl
Costumes – Kathi Maurer
Lighting – Ulrich Niepel
Revival director – Silke Sense

Chorus, Men of the Extra Chorus, and Children’s Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus masters: Jeremy Bines and Christian Lindhorst)

Opern-Ballet, Statisterie, and Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Donald Runnicles (conductor)

PARSIFAL von Richard Wagner, Deutsche Oper Berlin, copyright.
Image: Matthias Baus

Memory plays all manner of tricks: major and minor. I could have sworn I had seen Philipp Stölzl’s Deutsche Oper Parsifal twice before this, distinctly recalling having revisited it. I actually have no record of having done so, and am reasonably sure I would. I was also more enthusiastic the first time I saw it, in 2014, than now, describing it – admittedly for the vocal performances as much as the production – as ‘a Parsifal demanding both to be seen and to be heard’. Now it seems to me that it fulfils its repertory role, but is in looking somewhat tired. What has happened in the meantime? The tempting answer would be Stefan Herheim’s Bayreuth production, which transformed experience and understanding for so many. I myself have thought of it as akin to Patrice Chéreau’s Ring; things can never be the same again. I still do, but in this case the chronology does not fit, Herheim having been seen for the last time in 2012. It may have had a role in raising expectation and achievement across the board. Ironically, a major production from the intervening years, Dmitiri Tcherniakov’s Parsifal for the house across town, has in retrospect a few points in common with Stölzl, perhaps more in terms of appearance than substance, yet it remained by some way the bolder experience. (Click here for a brief comparison of Herheim and Tcherniakov.) Maybe this just needs more time devoted to revival (a well-nigh insuperable problem with repertoire houses). Or perhaps all this talk of comparison is a little decadent, and we should simply concentrate on what lies in front of us. 

What, then, lay in front of us here? In broad terms, Stölzl’s concept, insofar as I understand it, presents Monsalvat as a Templar-like community that has not only become tired, but deadly in preservation of long since dead rituals. Fanatics keep alive certain external forms, albeit in the form of weird tableaux vivants, which tellingly freeze rather than develop. Control, as in the typical secular claims against ‘religion’, is all—of the self and others, bloody (self-)flagellation included. These doubtless just about keep things going, but whatever it may have been that animated the community in the first place, presumably in some sense the Grail or related to it, has long since vacated the premises. Klingsor’s anti-Monsalvat is not merely the same: the cave within clearly hosts a different cult. There is something disquietingly orientalist, if not nearly so blatant as Uwe-Eric Laufenberg’s Islamophobic farrago at Bayreuth, to it; that may, of course, be deliberate, in playing with our conceptions. There is, though, I think, a strong implication that they ultimately have more in common than separates them. And the way the Flowermaidens emerge from the stone, becoming something otherwise through minimal shedding of costumes and clever lighting, is a nice touch. 

Presumably the whole thing, though, is a delusion: anti-religion claiming its title, against Wagner, though in common with many who have admired him. Talk of renewal, let alone that extraordinary – almost always ignored or underestimated – third-act claim of taking Christ down from the Cross, is probably just mumbo-jumbo; it certainly seems to be a lie. When Parsifal returns, Amfortas impales himself on the spear: a way out for him, though not necessarily for those left behind. Perhaps, as I noted last time, Stölzl heeds John Deathridge’s warning against resolution in ‘high-minded kitsch’, for redemption is an alien concept, one that never arises. The problem for me was not so much the grim framing, as the danger that by now the production had become its own ritual, in danger of succumbing to something not a million miles away from what it claimed to portray. 

Image: Bettina Stöß

Donald Runnicles led a performance not so very different – as memory serves – from Axel Kober ten years ago, though probably still more secure. He and the splendid Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper (the chorus too) put not a foot wrong throughout. This was not the sort of performance one might characterise as a particular ‘reading’; Runnicles’s collegial brand of music-making is not about that. Instead, he drew on what is, by now, clearly deep knowledge and understanding of the score to present it as faithfully as he could, neither merely framing nor inciting the action, yet considerate of the competing demands that go towards performance of opera (even, or especially, one calling itself a Bühnenweihfestspiel). If there were times when I might have preferred the orchestra to take the lead more strongly, there is room for various approaches here. 

Runnicles’s musicianship unquestionably allowed the cast, entirely new from ten years ago, to shine. Klaus Florian Vogt’s voice is, to my ears, more suited to some aspects of Parsifal’s character than others. He comes across, like no other, as father of Lohengrin (whilst still tempting Nietzsche’s mischievous question: how did he manage that?) There were a beauty and clarity to line and verbal projection that are not readily to be gainsaid, though ultimately I missed a sense of development. (One might, I suppose, argue that that is less needed in this production than in many.) Günther Groissböck’s Gurnemanz intrigued, not so much because he looked younger than many, but because he acted younger, particularly in the first act, there being a creditable distinction between both portrayals. Here was a charismatic leader, not some old bore, with interesting implications for those who listened and followed, and the life of the community as a whole. Jordan Shanahan proved an unusually likeable Amfortas, although he certainly had us share his pain too. As Kundry and somewhat like Runnicles, Irene Roberts seemed more concerned to bring out the text than present a strong ‘reading’ of her own. This she did with great skill, as did the cast as a whole. What was the problem, then? Perhaps there was none after all, or rather it was mine.

Rienzi, Deutsche Oper, 18 April 2019

Deutsche Oper

RIENZI, DER LETZE DER TRIBUNEN von Richard Wagner, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Premiere am 24. Januar 2010, copyright: Bettina Stöß

Rienzi – Torsten Kerl

Irene – Elisabeth Teige

Steffano Colonna – Andrew Harris

Adriano – Annika Schlicht

Paolo Orsini – Dong-Hwan Lee

Cardinal Orvieto – Derek Welton

Baroncelli – Clemens Bieber

Cecco del Vecchio – Stephen Bronk

Rienzi double – Gernot Frischling

Philipp Stölzl (director, set designs)

Mara Kurotschka (assistant director)

Ulrike Siegrist (set designs)

Kathi Maurer, Ursula Kudrna (costumes)

Lorenzo Nencini (revival director)

fettFilm (video)

Chorus and Extra Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus director: Jeremy Bines)

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Evan Rogister (conductor)

At last, an opportunity for me to see Rienzi, the only Wagner opera I had yet to see in the theatre. A long-held ambition fulfilled, then? Yes, just about. Alas, that was about it, though. There were two major, frankly insurmountable problems: first, the miserable conducting of Evan Rogister; second, the butchered version employed, so extreme as to render what we heard musically and dramatically nonsensical. Rarely in the theatre and never in the Deutsche Oper have I heard such a sustained display of incompetence in the pit as Rogister’s. The number of times the Overture came close – or more than close – to falling apart did not bode well. Singers, solo and chorus, often proved alarmingly out of sync with the orchestra; there was, moreover, no sign of the conductor so much as noticing, let alone putting things right. Occasionally, the music came into focus; it was bound to eventually, I suppose, though never for long. Interpretation? Forget it. It was hardly surprising that, for long stretches, this great Wagner orchestra seemed to have given up. Was this in fact Covent Garden’s dread Daniel Oren working under a pseudonym? A dark thought indeed. One to avoid with equal vigour, I fear.

However, even a Daniel Barenboim – if only he would consider one day conducting Wagner’s Cinderella – would have struggled with the version of the score handed to him. The composer struggled with its unintentional length, of course. His witness in Mein Leben is instructive and entertaining. Quite what it would mean to present a ‘complete’ Rienzi is unclear; the closest we may come is the version conducted by Edward Downes for a BBC radio recording, and even that falls short according to some understandings. Whilst there is something to be said for glorying in its length, for rendering its problems a virtue, that is unlikely to be an option any time soon. Cuts are, in principle, not the end of the world – and may, for many, prove the opera’s redemption. This, however, was something else, not only in the savagery of its cuts but in there seemingly arbitrary nature, as if someone had attempted to present a ‘children’s version’, but had not really tried, and had succeeded only in cutting it down to whatever the specified size had been. The number and nature of non sequiturs, musical just as much as dramatic, straightforwardly defied comprehension.

Of the work’s roots in Meyerbeerian grand opéra, there was well-nigh nothing remaining in structure, and merely the odd procession (usually truncated) as meaningless evidential detail. It is difficult to imagine someone making anything of the nobles’ role, let alone identity, nor indeed of anyone else’s. Of the seeds of what was to come, often overlooked, the little that remained ironically resembled, apparently more by accident than design, Wagner’s notorious demolition of Meyerbeer in Opera and Drama: an ‘outrageously coloured, historico-romantic, devilish-religious, sanctimonious-lascivious, risqué-sacred, saucy-mysterious, sentimental-swindling, dramatic farrago’, albeit hacked away at a bargain-basement cut-price quite at odds with anything might could have imparted meaning to the experience. Poetic justice? Perhaps, but to what end?

That the work’s promise – more than promise, as any of us who knows it will attest – nonetheless shone through is testimony not only to intrinsic merit, but also to some fine singing and, to a lesser extent, to Philipp Stölzl’s 2010 production. The latter is doubtless one-sided. In other circumstances, I might have been more inclined to complain about its too-ready association of Rienzi with fascism and, in the case of the Overture, with Hitler himself. The vision, in more than one sense, is at least memorable there: a Rienzi body-double looking out over the Alps from Berchtesgaden, listening to the music, conducting along, and resolving to rule the world. Use of video – great credit should go here to fettFILM – is unnervingly effective, permitting Rienzi as silent film speaker to address the masses, to turn them, even as we see and hear something else. A fascist design aesthetic in dress, colour, and architecture heightens the unsubtle line; at least, though, it is a line. In any case, is subtlety really what we are looking for in Rienzi? The chorus in particular might nonetheless have been better directed. Stölzl’s trademark tableaux vivants are one thing; they work more meaningfully in his Deutsche Oper Parsifal, I think, even though that came later. Too often, though, one had the impression poor chorus members were merely being left to fend for themselves.

In the title role, Torsten Kerl had his moments, although too often he proved vocally stretched. There could be no faulting his enthusiasm, though, nor his skills as a film propagandist. (His Overture body double, Gernot Frischling, deserves credit too.) Annika Schlicht, however, in the Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient role of Adriano, proved the star of the show: clear as a bell, bright and subtle as a speaking clarinet, and very much a breeches mezzo on stage. (Schröder-Devrient seems to have struggled to learn the part: there were clearly no such difficulties here.) I hope to hear – and see – more from her. Insofar as the cuts permitted, Elisabeth Teige also impressed as Irene, as did those assuming what were now less smaller than miniscule roles. Rienzi, though, deserved so much better. On the positive side, I stand all the more determined to see a production and to hear a performance – preferably in tandem – that in some sense do justice to this singular work. And if someone would kindly return the manuscript from Russia, that would be nice too.

Parsifal, Deutsche Oper, 21 April 2014

Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Amfortas – Bo Skovhus

Titurel – Tobias Kehrer

Gurnemanz – Hans-Peter König

Parsifal – Stefan Vinke

Kundry – Evelyn Herlitzius

Klingsor – Bastiaan Everink

Knights of the Grail – Burkhard Ulrich, Andrew Harris

Esquires – Siobhan Stagg, Christine Sidak, Paul Kaufmann, Alvaro Zambrano

Flowermaidens – Siobhan Stagg, Martina Welschenbach, Katarina Bradic, Elena Tsallagova, Christina Sidak, Dana Beth Miller

Voice from Above – Dana Beth Miller

Philipp Stölzl (director)

Mara Kurotschka (co-director)

Conrad Moritz Reinhardt, Philipp Stölzl (set designs)

Kathi Maurer (costumes)

Günther Kittler (video)

Ulrich Niepel (lighting)

 Chorus, Men of the Extra Chorus, and Children’s Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus masters: William Spaulding, Christian Lindhorst)

Opera-ballet and Statisterie of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, Axel Kober (conductor)

 

Philipp Stölzl’s Deutsche Oper production of Parsifal replaced Gotz Friedrich’s offering from 1998 last season; I was able, in a feat of Wagnerian dedication unusual even for me, to see it revived just three days after Leipzig’s Good Friday staging of the Bühnenweihfestspiel. The opening might have made still stronger an impression on Good Friday: a depiction of what might be considered the work’s foundational myth, the Crucifixion, as the first-act Prelude offered musical and philosophical explanation as to why it might have been necessary – or, alternatively, why, in Michael Tanner’s analysis, following that of Robert Raphael, it might be necessary to stop Christ ascending the Cross. In a sense, Stölzl concurs; in a sense he does not. It might be necessary, but in the sorry consequences lain out, there is no chance of accomplishing such a need, whether symbolised by Parsifal or otherwise. What we see is one of the most accomplished and indeed extreme stagings I have yet witnessed from a school which, doubtless partially but not entirely unreasonably, understands Monsalvat as a religious community that has gone horribly, in this case irredeemably, wrong. In this Hell-on-Earth – is Hell not where Christ Himself sojourned before rising on Easter morning? – of religious fanaticism, lascivious, Opus Dei-tinged relish is taken in self-chastisement prior to continual re-enactment of deicide. Unable to look beyond the tableaux vivants which just about keep the community alive, its members re-present kitsch, yes, but deadly kitsch. Carl Dahlhaus's observation regarding the action's characterisation by 'inclination towards ritual and tableau' reveals, perhaps obsessively but certainly with conviction, a darker side indeed.

 

Stölzl’s creation is not merely anti-Christian, more anti-religious, perhaps with respect both to organised religion and to transcendence. The Flowermaidens are initially more geological than blooming, seemingly hewn from the rock of Klingsor’s Tora Bora-like lair, before their brief moment of colour. Likewise, Kundry’s burqa-clad appearance – interestingly, quite unsensationalised – makes its point before her unveiling. All the while, the second act proceedings, perhaps an Orientalist ‘other’ to the sick ritualism of Monsalvat, are haunted by the sacrifice of a comely knight who has, perhaps tired of his moribund community, repeated Amfortas’s temptation and fall. Even when the would-be Crusader Parsifal is acclaimed, Resurrection never comes. At the moment of what would be healing, Amfortas impales himself upon the proffered spear: a way out, perhaps, but not that envisaged either by the Church or by Wagner. Perhaps Stölzl heeds John Deathridge’s warning of resolution in 'high-minded kitsch'. It is not how we should always wish to experience the work, and the redemption of redemption, above all in music, achieved by, Stefan Herheim is unavailable in a staging that pursues one concept single-mindedly rather than having them dialectically interact as Wagner himself did. There is room for both.

 

Axel Kober led the fine Deutsche Oper Orchestra, which put not a foot wrong, in an honest, sensitive account, which, if it neither scaled the Boulezian dramatic heights nor plumbed the Gattian religious depths, told Wagner’s musical story well. Stefan Vinke’s proved untiring in the title role, though there were times when his vocal stridency proved a little too much. If the Knights had compared his tone with the warmth and humanity of Hans-Peter König’s Gurnemanz, they might have decided to enthrone the latter instead. Evelyn Herlitzius offered a duly committed performance as Kundry; her vocal wildness might have benefited from taming earlier in the second act, for there were undeniable passages of questionable intonation, but her wounded-animal reaction to Parsifal’s rejection offered a great musico-dramatic experience. Bo Skovhus’s detailed attention towards music, words, gesture, and their interaction was highly to be commended as Amfortas. Moreover, Tobias Kehrer made more of a mark than many as a deep-voiced Titurel. Knights, esquires, and Flowermaidens were of a consistently high standard, a credit to the company as a whole, likewise the truly excellent singing from William Spaulding’s chorus, its movement blocked with equal excellence. This was a Parsifal demanding both to be seen and to be heard.