The opening bars of Richard Wagner’s final masterpiece, Parsifal, form a monophony. One single, long, musical line shorn of harmony and counterpoint.
Totally unlike the brassy crash, bang wallop of the likes of Die Maestersinger, or Der fliegende Holländer. Wandering up and down the stave without resolution. Creating uncertainty.
Parsifal, twenty years in gestation, was to be different. The crowning achievement of a stellar career. In July 1882, as the curtain rose at Bayreuth, Wagner was drawing his audience into another reality.
A place where time and space became meaningless. A setting for his Bühnenweihfestspiel, “a festival play for the consecration of the stage”.
Drama, grandeur and spirituality would make Parsifal unique. You could worship only in Bayreuth. This was not just a trip to the opera. Wagner’s audiences were on pilgrimage.
He banned performances in any other opera house, a vetobroken only by New York’s Metropolitan Opera on Christmas Eve 1903, where some clever dick worked out the long reach of copyright did not apply.
This nose-thumb was an act of beautiful defiance that would make the newly self-appointed boss of Washington’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts proud. Of course, only if Donald could take time out from his big military parade in Washington’s nearby Mall to pop in.
Wagner’s original intention was to torch Bayreuth after the first performance and never stage Parsifal again. Fortunately for history, Cosima, “I’m in charge of the dodgy Wagnerfamily budget,” had other ideas. It brought bums on Bayreuth seats. The Parsifal score and the theatre survived.
In 1914, when copyright eventually ran out in Europe, in the eight months before the outbreak of the First World War, fifty opera houses blazed the epic across the continent. The redemptive mystery of Parsifal swept all before it.
News of copyright expiration does not seem to have reached Glyndebourne, Sussex, England, where this summer is staged an opera bearing the Parsifal name, sounding like Wagner, but bearing only a passing resemblance to the original story.
Go on. Don’t be shy. You can show the real thing.
Directed by Jetske Mijnssen, who enjoys a reputation as a “psychological” director – with a bit a thing for Regietheater, i.e. ignoring composer’s wishes – this Glyndebourne Parsifalis a sad travesty. No story line goes unmauled.
For those unfamiliar with the mystical tale, a precis. There is a wandering swan-shooting knight, Parsifal, a perfect redemptive fool, who bumps into the Holy Grail Order, guardians of the cup that received Christ’s blood, in their mountain top temple, Monsalvat. And we go on from there. He shocks them by shooting their favourite swan with his bow and arrow.
The Knights are in conflict with an evil wizard, Klingsor – a disgruntled ex-knight – who steals a sword that pierced Christ’s side from the knight Amfortas, son of the King Titurel, then stabs him with it, leaving a septic wound.
Amfortas was being distracted by the sexy Kundry a wild woman who laughed at Christ on the Cross – obviously at least a thousand years old – but with a face-and-everything-lift courtesy of Klingsor. Come on, at the back! Keep up!
Parsifal resists the temptations of Kundry and assorted flower maidens, wrests the sword back from Klingsor, destroying his magic, then returns to Monsalvat to be hailed as King by Gurnemanz, a holy Knight of the Grail and sort of Master of Ceremonies.
Klingsor is healed, the sacrament of the Grail is administered to Kundry, allowing her to die reconciled to Christ. Eventually the ceremony of the Grail is shared with all the knights who are thus restored to tip top health.
For those unfamiliar with this simple tale, here is to be found the Holy Grail of a full synopsis.
It may sound like chaotic hokum but take it on trust from me that, for this opera to remain the dazzling mystery that Wagner intended, some plot essentials have to be observed.
Monsalvat cannot be a nondescript dining room in some rural parish church with the Knights kitted out as junior clerics. Then, when they are meant to be at their last gasp and on their financial uppers they can’t turn up at Titurel’s funeral parading around in well-tailored frockcoats and black lumhats.
This is how they were kitted out at Glyndebourne – and often located offstage. The setting was prosaic, not mystical.
Parsifal must return after besting Klingsor with thathumungous sword. Not a barely visible pen knife. Nor can the sword proper be impersonated by an unexplained supernumerary who embraces Amfortas in his pyjamas, healing the wound.
Presumably a clunky attempt to suggest that Amfortas was really healed by “fellowship”. Not that horrid sword thing. Ugh!
Kundry must die to make any sense of her character and back story. Condemned to eternal torment because she laughed at Christ on the cross, she craves the release of death, not to stump off as a rejuvenated 1,000-year-old freak show!
Then there is the minor detail of the Holy Grail. Where was it? There was a mysterious, nondescript box lying beside Amfortas’ bed, which was opened and closed to little effect. Just didn’t hack it. Indiana Jones and the Surprisingly Small Box would not have packed them into cinemas. Nor did it make sense at Glyndebourne.
What on earth was Stephen Langridge, Glyndebourne’s Artistic Director, smoking when he had the initial commissioning discussions with Mijnssen, presumably years ago?
It is one thing to subtly bring a masterpiece up to date. Temple Music’s recent semi-staging of Act III of Parsifal at Temple Church directed by Julia Burbach, in which members of the public processed and were then transformed into Grail Knights provided present day relevance while preserving the mystery of the story intact.
It is another to twist an opera, to meet a director’s whim, out of all recognition.
Fly on the wall. I imagine the original Langridge/Mijnssen conversation, perhaps in the Glyndebourne Long Bar, unfolding thus:
“So, no sword. You think a penknife will cut it?” “Not just a penknife, there’s a big guy who’ll give Amfortas a hug.” “Why?” “Meghan Markle’s on a healing journey. Catch the wave.”
“And how does Kundry die again?” “She doesn’t, she just slopes off”. “But, redeemed, of course?” “No, she just slopes off.”
“And will the Knights gather round The Holy Grail at the end in a triumph of redemption?” “Nah! We’ll keep them offstage. I’ve got a wee Scottish quaich that’ll do for the Grail”.
“What do you think about staging a Gotterdammerung next season where it all ends well?” “Up for that! Oh, and can I have my penknife back after the last Parsifal?”
That apart, how went the rest of the show? Robin Ticciati,Glyndebourne’s musical director of ten years standing was in the pit, delivering a perfectly paced score. His sound world evoked all the mystery the staging lacked. Fabulous sound world.
The orchestra was The London Philharmonic. They and the chorus had depth and sensitivity. The enigmatic music lines need careful handling if the meaning is not to be blurred. This was a highly skilled performance all round.
Kundry was strongly sung and superbly acted – unfortunately as directed – by Kristina Stanek, projecting a potent mixture of passive-aggressive surliness and desperate sexuality.
But she was never allowed to portray the historically doomed character who laughed at Jesus. Just a young girl having the odd hissy fit, then hanging around like an unwanted spare.
John Relyea sang the long-suffering Gurnemanz, Audun Iversen, the anguished Amfortas. Ryan Speedo Green proved a volatile Klingsor.
Daniel Johansson was an over emollient Parsifal. He did not quite come up to the mark when he returns in Act III, a fool no more. Nice guy, shame about the sword. His voice lacked the tortured intensity of a Jonas Kaufman, who took on the role at the Met from 2012 until 2020.
The Francois Girard production, available on HD, was also psychologically devastating. Capturing perfectly the other world Wagner had in mind.
Parsifal is not for the faint-hearted opera goer. It needs a bit of homework to understand what Wagner is trying to achieve. But it is worth the effort, to even catch a glimpse of Wagner’s wonder world.
The main trick for any production is to transport the audience to Wagner’s mystical 12th century world, inspired by Wolfram von Eschenbach‘s poem Parzival. Unusually, Glyndebourne let us down, leaving the audience bewildered.
And Another, Scottish, Thing!
Jamie MacDougall, The Scottish tenor with a glowing track record as soloist and a Scottish Opera regular, is coming to London. Hoxton Music Hall to be precise, on Sunday 22 June with his Harry Lauder Show.
This year it’s the 155th birthday of Scotland’s greatest troubadour, who conquered America with A Wee Deoch An’ Doris and Keep Right on to the End of the Road. I asked for a Deoch An’ Doris in the Tap Room at The University Club of New York recently. Sid, the barman, shook his head.
This is a musical play about Sir Harry Lauder’s life, filled with songs, familiar as 78rpm shellack records played on your granny’s wind-up gramophone.
The play is an adaptation of an original by the celebrated Scottish comedian, actor and Glasgow theatre owner, Jimmy Logan. Not only will it be a glimpse of the past, it willcertainly be delivered with the vim and vigour MacDougall brings to all his roles.
He’s also singing in a Holland Park Gilbert and Sullivan double bill at the end of June.
Pick up your knobbly walking stick and a slice of music hall history at Hoxton Music Hall on the 22nd. Proceeds go to Erskine Hospital, the Scottish Veterans’ Charity, as do all Lauder’s royalties. Grab your tickets now.