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The New York Times, February 7, 2013 |
By CORINNA da FONSECA-WOLLHEIM |
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Defying Wagner With Buckets of Blood
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Foto: Ruby Washington/The New York Times |
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On
Monday afternoon Jonas Kaufmann stood in his dressing room at the
Metropolitan Opera holding up his hands, which were stained red. He had just
rehearsed Act II of a new production of Parsifal, in which he sings the
title role, and although he had stripped off the makeup and slipped into
jeans and a crumpled shirt, there were parts of his skin where the stage
blood just wouldnt come off.
There is lots of blood in this
production, which is directed by François Girard and will receive its Met
premiere on Friday evening. (It is a co-production with Opéra de Lyon and
was first performed there in March.) In the first act blood fills a dried
river bed that bisects the stage; in Act II the entire floor is covered in
1,600 gallons of the fake blood made of a combination of water, glycerin and
food coloring.
There is blood everywhere in this opera, said Mr.
Kaufmann, a German tenor. Its about this wound that never heals, so why not
play the second act inside this wound?
Parsifal, first performed in
1882, is Wagners final work for the stage: in equal parts, fairy tale,
ritual and philosophical testament. He wrote the manuscript in purple ink
and termed the work a Bühnenweihspiel, a festival for the consecration of
the stage. He left instructions for it never to be performed outside
Bayreuth, where he had built a theater that created a new kind of immersive
and worshipful listening experience, with a covered orchestra pit and house
lighting that plunged the audience into darkness. To this day there is no
applause at the end of a Parsifal performance in Bayreuth.
In 1903
the Met gave Parsifal its first performance outside Bayreuth, after a copy
of the score had been smuggled out. Since then this drama about an innocent
fool who gains knowledge in the act of resisting temptation and restores the
power of the knights of the Holy Grail has demanded interpretation.
Its reputed to be undirectable, said Mr. Girard, a Canadian director whose
movies include The Red Violin. And now, after five years of working on
Parsifal, I can lecture students in theater schools on why its the
impossible piece.
In his vision Parsifal is set in a postapocalyptic
world made barren by global warming. The sets by Michael Levine, Mr.
Kaufmann said, look exactly like those images you see from Africa where it
hasnt rained in many years and there are cracks in the surface of the earth.
During the prelude operagoers look at themselves, mirrored in a
reflective curtain. It starts with, Ladies and gentlemen, this piece is
about you, Mr. Girard said. Its about our own search for spirituality and
the fundamental principles of compassion and temptation.
For the
most part, Mr. Girard added, he stayed very close to Wagners text. You see a
swan, you see a spear, you see a grail, he said. The second act will always
be abstract. We are talking about Klingsor, the prince of darkness. Here its
revealed as the underside of consciousness. We are going into the depth of
the wound of Amfortas. Its set in a thick layer of human blood, which is
ultimately the center of gravity of the piece.
Amfortas, the knight
whose wound is closed only in Act III, when Parsifal reunites the spear with
the chalice of the grail, will be sung by Peter Mattei. The cast also
includes René Pape as Gurnemanz and Katarina Dalayman as the temptress
Kundry, who seeks deliverance from generations of painful reincarnation,
punishment for having laughed at Jesus on the cross. The role of Klingsor is
sung by Evgeny Nikitin.
The operas themes of reincarnation,
renunciation and enlightenment through compassion are evidence, Mr. Girard
said, of Wagners fascination with Buddhism. Wagner was introduced to Eastern
forms of spirituality through the writings of Schopenhauer, and the Buddhist
ideal of renunciation in particular comes through in letters to Wagners
muse, Mathilde Wesendonck, and in the diaries of his wife, Cosima.
In
Mr. Girards vision the Buddhist wheel of suffering is represented by the
knights of the grail, who sit on one side of the stage in a perfect circle.
Mr. Pape, who sang the role of Gurnemanz in the Mets previous production by
Otto Schenk, described it as a closed circle, and the knights all want to
break out but cant.
He continued: It expresses this mens world, this
sense of being lost, this hope, this it cant go on like this. And on the
other side is the excluded society of women, who come and go and constantly
form new constellations. The mens configuration is stable, but there is that
barrenness. When all come together four and a half hours later, it ends on a
very human note.
Mr. Girard said that the operas prodigious length
and the cast of nearly 180 singers, dancers and extras forced him to
relinquish control over certain details. Rather than cue every step, he is
giving groups of chorus members autonomy to initiate certain movements. Mr.
Kaufmann said there were heated conversations among the cast on details of
the text, which in its mock-archaic German holds many ambiguities. And there
are the stage directions inside the music, which demand to be heeded and
sometimes put the conductor, Daniele Gatti, in the position of stage
director.
The piece is greater than everyone, Mr. Girard said. It
levels the egos, because you have no choice but to bond within that huge
piece to survive.
Mr. Kaufmann added: Every time Im overwhelmed by
the beauty of this music. The music that describes all these miracles and
all this passion is just incredibly gorgeous and tempting. It really pulls
you into this world. Even people who are not religious become religious
while hearing this music.
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