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Wall Street Journal, February 19, 2013 |
By HEIDI WALESON |
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Wagner: Parsifal, Metropolitan Opera, 15. Februar 2013 |
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New Approaches to Themes Sacred and Sexual
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In an imaginative new production of Richard Wagner's "Parsifal" that is
perfectly suited to the music, François Girard successfully transforms the
opera, which opened at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, from a
faux-Christian rite into a timeless story about a beleaguered community that
is held together—barely—by a sacred ritual that is itself under threat.
Arresting, consistently absorbing stage pictures expertly follow the
mournful flow of this slow-moving epic, while a powerhouse cast of singers
and the Met Orchestra under the sure direction of Daniele Gatti ensure that
the evening has both gravity and momentum.
In Wagner's libretto, the
Holy Grail is protected by an order of knights. Their leader, Amfortas,
suffers horribly from a wound that will not heal, and can be cured only by a
holy fool who is "enlightened by compassion." Mr. Girard moves "Parsifal"
into a postapocalyptic time. In Acts I and III, Michael Levine's striking
set is a parched, treeless landscape bisected by a stream which flows with
blood, a symbol of the wound that divides the community. The knights, in
modern white shirts and black trousers (the costumes are by Thibault
Vancraenenbroeck), huddle in a circle on one side of it. On the other is a
silent, excluded group of women, an indication that Mr. Girard isn't going
along with the libretto's premise that forbidden sexual desire is the root
of all evil; rather, it is a symbol of a fractured society.
In Act II
Parsifal, the "holy fool," descends into the wound itself—the Met stage is
covered with a pool of "blood." Ghostly flower maidens with long black hair
and white dresses tempt him in Carolyn Choa's creepy, seductive
choreography. He resists them and the seductress Kundry, whose white dress
and bed grow red with the blood as she splashes around in it. He recovers
the lost Grail spear, kills the sorcerer Klingsor, and returns to the
knights to heal Amfortas's wound and become their leader.
David
Finn's sensitive lighting dramatizes the deterioration of the knights' home
between Acts I and Act III, and Peter Flaherty's video designs are eloquent,
stylized abstractions—clouds, planets, landscape and even women's
bodies—that enhance the drama of the transformation scenes and the Grail
ritual.
Ritual remains a central feature of this production. Yet Mr.
Girard also builds a poignantly human story through the principal singers.
As Gurnemanz, the éminence grise of the grail knights, bass René Pape was
magisterial and warm, with a penetrating delivery that enlivened his long
monologues. Baritone Peter Mattei seemed to be living the agony of Amfortas,
both in the fierceness of his singing and his halting, excruciating attempts
to walk. Jonas Kaufmann made Parsifal complicated and vivid, from
the adolescent shrug with which he conveyed his initial lack of
understanding to the pure, messianic authority of his final transformation.
Evgeny Nikitin was a properly brutal, slashing Klingsor, and Katarina
Dalayman brought controlled passion to Kundry, expertly crafting the
seduction scene. Mr. Girard has her lift the Grail for the final ritual, as
the women and the men mix together onstage for the first time. Wagner might
not have approved, but the gesture of reconciliation, overriding the
libretto's misogyny and obsession with male purity, fit the music and
completed Mr. Girard's moving, modern vision.
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