Parsifal, Metropolitan Opera HD Live, March 2 2013

There were advance warnings about this production of Wagner’s final opera, Parsifal. Word was, blood everywhere, the idea being that since the plot is about Amfortas’s unhealing wound (among other things), the action should take place within the wound. Strange, not necessarily effective, and true for only one act of the three.

The first act took place on a raked surface of dried, cracked mud, marked only by a channel a few inches wide running down the center of the stage and taking a turn toward the left as it neared the front of the stage. The channel started off dry, then later it ran with clear water, and even later it ran with blood. The entire rear wall was a surface for projections: clouds, roiling stormy clouds, astronomical objects (featureless Uranus?), barren deserts, and nebulous abstractions. More interesting was what the director had the members of the (all-male) chorus do. When the curtain rose, we saw about four rows of men extending from one side of the stage to the other, dressed in suits and ties, sitting on chairs. Parsifal, in dark blue pajamas, was in the center, with a gentle spotlight on his face. As the music proceeded, one man after another stood up, in seemingly random order. When all had stood up, they proceeded to discard their ties, their coats, and their shoes and socks, remaining dressed in dark wool slacks and white long-sleeved shirts. They then reformed (taking their chairs with them) in a double (concentric) circle, all bowed low toward the center of the circle. Eventually Amfortas was revealed as the man at the 12:00 position of the inner circle. From time to time they made various random gestures whose significance I could not determine.

The second act was the bloody act. As the intermission interview described, the blood was made from 1200 gallons of water mixed with glycerine and food coloring. For the comfort of the flower maidens, who had to perform while standing ankle-deep in blood, the blood was heated to 105°. The stage manager told us that shaving cream worked well for removing the blood from the singers’s skin afterwards. The flower maidens were dressed in pure white, formless dresses with spaghetti straps, and each held a simple spear, a rod that tapered to a point; there were no distinct spearheads. In back of the pool of blood was a rock face, cleft in the middle from bottom to top, through which various cloudy and other projections could be seen. 

For the third act we were back on the cracked-mud surface, but this time a number of graves had been dug in it. Some were open holes in the ground, with mounds of earth piled behind; others had clearly been dug out and filled in. The bandage-wrapped body of Titurel was placed in one of the open graves. Again, various projections played on the rear wall.

Our cast:
Parsifal: Jonas Kaufmann
Gurnemanz: Rene Pape
Amfortas: Peter Mattei
Klingsor: Evgeny Nikitin
Kundry: Katarina Dalayman
Conductor: Daniele Gatti
Director: Francois Girard

Rene Pape was outstanding as Gurnemanz; I had not realized how big that role is, and he handled it with assurance. Peter Mattei made a fine Amfortas, clearly portraying his severe, unending pain, and singing well despite the pain. Jonas Kaufmann’s Parsifal seemed detached from the goings-on, befitting the innocent fool who sees but does not understand. Evgeny Nikitin was properly menacing as Klingsor. The prelude was ethereal, but ultimately the opera suffers from lots and lots of music and not very much action. I know it’s a masterwork; some day perhaps I will dig in and study it closely and come away with a much enhanced appreciation, but for today it falls short of being a beta.

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