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Financial Times, 30.6.2018 |
Shirley Apthorp |
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Wagner: Parsifal, Bayerische Staatsoper, 28. Juni 2018 |
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Parsifal, Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich — a prestige production
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A staging of Wagner’s opera that is full of big-name artists |
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The problem with hiring visual artists as set designers for opera
productions is that they seldom leave room for the music. In having Georg
Baselitz design a Parsifal for the Bavarian State Opera, intendant Nikolaus
Bachler won a big name for his season brochure. But Baselitz has made
Baselitz’s Parsifal, and the result feels rather like being locked inside an
exhibition for five hours while listening to Wagner.
Fortunately the
Wagner is driven by Kirill Petrenko, who draws playing of ravishing warmth
from the house orchestra and carries his singers with infinite tenderness.
His is a gentle, reflective Parsifal, full of delicate colours, strong when
it needs to be, always in motion, never violent.
Baselitz’s set for
the last act is the same as his set for the first act, but upside down (of
course) — a cut-out forest of the kind you might find as a Gothic cardboard
construct in a box of particularly depressing breakfast cereal. Insert tab A
into slot B. There are some luminously painted curtains for the orchestral
interludes, and Klingsor’s magic garden in the middle act is a rough
suggestion of a brick wall with a suggestive gash in it.
In Pierre
Audi, Bachler found a director who would not attempt to insert his own ego
in front of Baselitz’s sketchy imagery. But Audi is left with no
interpretative wiggle room, and cannot answer any of the work’s fundamental
questions — who are these knights, what is the grail, what is this
redemption? At two key moments, Audi simply lets his protagonists place
their hands over their eyes, implying an internal answer, presumably for
want of any other option. Audi’s figures are left to float in an obligatory
stasis, striving for a spiritual purity that is utterly at odds with the
naked, smeary fat suits of Florence von Gerkan’s costumes, or the rubbery
ambiguity of Baselitz’s winter trees. Urs Schönebaum’s lighting lends a
helpful note of poetry — purple for the Good Friday flowers — but the
totality is bleak.
The plus of such a big-name cast is that there is
plenty of excellent singing. René Pape is a Gurnemanz whose every word is
not only crystal clear, but also infused with meaning. Christian Gerhaher
brings even more exactitude to the role of Amfortas, singing every letter of
his text with love and lending the whole exceptional formal grace. Nina
Stemme’s Kundry is filled with compassion, while Jonas Kaufmann remains on a
planet of his own as Parsifal, delivering singing that sounds effortless and
clean but moving as if his main concern is to display aloof disdain for all
around him.
Wagner wanted Parsifal to be a religious act. It is not
necessarily a bad thing when a performance is not that. But it needs to be
something. This is a Parsifal assembled with prestige as its main goal. It
sounds superb, and looks imposing. But it never really takes off as music
theatre.
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