|
|
|
|
Financial Times, February 24, 2013 |
By Martin Bernheimer |
|
Wagner: Parsifal, Metropolitan Opera, 21. Februar 2013 |
|
Parsifal, Metropolitan Opera, New York
|
Strong music-making is the strength of this production, with Jonas
Kaufmann performing the title role with rare sensitivity |
|
When the Met introduced its last Parsifal in 1991, Plácido Domingo and
Jessye Norman served as atypical Wagnerian attractions. The picture-postcard
production was staged by Otto Schenk and designed by Günther
Schneider-Siemssen. Things have changed.
The new Parsifal,
shared with Lyon and Toronto, features more predictable principals, Jonas
Kaufmann and Katarina Dalayman. And, as directed by François Girard
with sets by Michael Levine and costumes by Thibault Vancraenenbroeck,
everything looks stubbornly, sometimes perversely, modern.
The
music-making, in any case, is strong. Daniele Gatti enforces grandeur in the
pit without slighting nuance, and the orchestra sounds almost as brilliant
as it did in the glory days of James Levine. Kaufmann, physically
and vocally slender, performs Parsifal with rare sensitivity and point, more
in the manner of Wolfgang Windgassen than Lauritz Melchior.
Dalayman’s somewhat reticent Kundry rises to the high climaxes with laughing
ease. Although René Pape moves casually through Girard’s stylised
gesture-scheme, his wondrous bass never tires. Peter Mattei brings pathos
and piety to Amfortas’s agonies, and Evgeny Nikitin as Klingsor makes up in
thrust for what he lacks in malevolence. The chorus, trained by Donald
Palumbo, demonstrates virtuosity in depth.
Girard’s visual narrative
toys starkly with Brechtian clichés. His favoured devices include codified
movement patterns, blatant sexual symbols, blood stains for everyone, and
projections that veer from realistic cloud formations to arty abstractions
to misplaced moonscapes. Old mystical mumbo-jumbo rituals give way to new
mystical mumbo-jumbo rituals enlisting barefoot mobs in mufti. The scene
remains dark and cold, even when the text describes light and warmth.
Carolyn Choa’s choreography favours static gestures and unison sways.
Innovation may be modest here, but by local standards it seems
revolutionary.
Incidental intelligence: Peter Gelb’s greatest success
at the Met must involve his HD theatrical telecasts, but these come at a
price. Distractions on Thursday included a mechanised camera constantly
rolling on a forestage track, another camera suspended from a side loge on a
moving crane, and obtrusive cameras stationed near the pit. So much for
in-house illusions.
|
|
|
|
|
|