Norway Wagner, Parsifal (staged live performance): Soloists, Bergen Philharmonic Choir, Edvard Grieg Kor, Edvard Grieg Jentekor, Edvard Grieg Guttekor, Collegium Musicums Choir (refrain grasp: Håkon Matti Skrede) and Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner (conductor). Livestreamed (directed by Marius Marthinussen Søreide) on Bergenphilive and OperaImaginative and prescient (and out there till 21.5.2023) from the Grieg Hall, Bergen, 21.1.2023. (JPr)
The extra I write about live performance performances of Parsifal (and I’ve seen and heard just a few) there’s little new I can write about Wagner’s remaining opera. What did the composer need us all to know from his Parsifal? (Any additional recommendations after studying this is able to be gratefully obtained.)
I bear in mind a programme essay for a 2018 Saffron Opera Group efficiency when Speight Jenkins – Seattle Opera’s former normal director – talked about how Gurnemanz ‘tells the young man [Parsifal] that in the temple “time becomes space”. Even in the twenty-first century it is hard to understand what Wagner meant, he never said’. Thoughts on Parsifal veer from it being an eclectic mixture of Christian symbolism, Buddhist philosophy and medieval fantasy, to being interpreted from a Freudian perspective, and even worse, thought of to be a treatise on ‘racial cleansing’. Who is redeemed on the finish of the work stays an intriguing puzzle because it might be virtually any of the characters, particularly if we settle for it’s all extra Buddhist than Christian and they’re all on the trail from ignorance to enlightenment. Perhaps it’s simply that – in direction of the tip of his life – it was Wagner himself who felt he ought to search redemption?
I’ve repeated a lot of this as a result of in probably the most beautiful tableau of this ‘staged concert’ it confirmed how Parsifal brings solace and reconciliation to a fractured society riven by political, non secular and (presumably) racial discord. Nicolai Riise – who directed what we noticed on the live performance platform with a lightweight hand – has everybody (esquires, grail knights, flowermaidens, Klingsor, Kundry, the lifeless Titurel, Amfortas, and Gurnemanz) ‘healed’ beneath the dove of peace Parsifal holds aloft.
Basically, it’s the sacred spear that pierced Christ’s aspect and the Grail along with his blood which are the relics the plot hinges on: brotherhood, chastity and sexual need hyperlinks the clever and revered Gurnemanz, the wounded king Amfortas, his enemy Klingsor, a femme fatale Kundry, and the naive Parsifal, every of whom have their very own demons to overcome. With Wagner in live performance the viewers can focus extra totally on the phrases and music as a result of they’re spared the priority of being puzzled by the whims of the newest wunderkind stage director. To be sincere with Wagner’s chic music being carried out in its entirety in Bergen for the primary time within the opera’s 140 years, at instances I might have been happier simply to take heed to it with out among the singing!
Ivar Skjørestad’s lighting steered, the place applicable, the vegetation of a forest or the blue stained glass of the Grail Temple. Apart from just a few chairs there was little on stage with solely a desk for Act I and a protracted pink sofa for Act II. Thankfully there was a touch of a lifeless swan stuffed in a sack, and for the grail ceremony there was a golden chalice which glowed blood-red and a salver of small goblets. Klingsor was truly given a spear (which oddly doesn’t all the time occur).
With singers – who commendably knew they roles – repeating efficiency they’ve most likely given elsewhere there was solely a minimal sense of stage route and interplay between singers who sang out to the viewers for many of the opera. There was a casual formality to what everybody wore although the grail knights gave the impression to be a militaristic order slightly like fashionable Templars. There was a suggestion of military uniforms all with medal ribbon bars; the featured grail knights wore gray jackets and the esquires beige ones; Amfortas – if not in a gray dressing robe – was in a blue blazer; and the red-bereted, commander-in-chief Titurel was trundled on in a wheelchair for the primary act and his empty chair, jacket and beret had been commemorated within the third one. The males of the refrain – in acquainted black – represented all the opposite grail knights by parading throughout the stage earlier than singing behind the orchestra and utilizing their scores. I used to be listening by TV loudspeakers and the offstage girls’s voices sounded as in the event that they had been in one other metropolis and oh the bells, I’ve heard clock tower bells with extra resonance!
A modestly blinged up Klingsor had a (fake?) black leather-based coat; Kundry seemed dowdy to start with in inexperienced and matching crocheted scarf, later sporting a extra modern pink and black robe; and the flowermaidens had been in gaudy floral print clothes and had flowery tiaras. In comparability, Brindley Sherratt appeared to have dressed himself as Gurnemanz along with his brown corduroy jacket initially and comfortable gray cardigan when he returned in Act III. On this event the Voice from Above received her second within the highlight and seemed angelic in white. Parsifal had a lumberjack shirt and gray padded gilet and a black hoodie was his ‘disguise’ within the third act earlier than he returned on the finish of opera in white.
Sadly, aside from Sherratt’s Gurnemanz, numerous famous Wagnerians had been maybe forged within the flawed roles. Sherratt was a grizzled and immensely authoritative Gurnemanz. The decrease a part of his bass voice is in positive form however among the greater traces of the music challenged him. Nevertheless, he communicated the textual content properly and was the near-perfect embodiment of this Wagnerian elder. Johan Reuter didn’t appear significantly enfeebled, definitely not vocally, and his bitter, defeatist angle was extra like Alberich, or Wotan considered one of his signature roles. Ólafur Sigurdarson impressed as Alberich final summer season in Bayreuth’s new Ring cycle and his slightly forthright one-dimensional Klingsor, introduced again reminiscences of these performances in addition to showing to be an audition for Wotan. Reinhard Hagen’s deep bass impressed in Titurel’s baleful utterances, while Monika Jägerová’s Voice from Above sounded insecure and she or he distinctly did not float her notes. Kudos to a playfully aggressive sextet of onstage flowermaidens.
I wish to be enthusiastic in regards to the contributions of Ricarda Merbeth as Kundry and Stuart Skelton (who I’ve watched over a few years) as Parsifal. Merbeth was a very melodramatic, wide-eyed Kundry who appeared to imagine the opera was named after her character and she or he had the star half. (Whether that was her fault, or that of director Nicolai Riise, I can’t be sure.) Merbeth jogged my memory of Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard at instances and was the least alluring Kundry I’ve seen. Throughout Merbeth’s voice had the arduous edge one associates extra readily with Brünnhilde which she additionally sings.
Of the principle forged this leaves me with Stuart Skelton’s effortful Parsifal portrayed – similar to his Peter Grimes – as a sulky, immature boy in a person’s physique and somebody with a psychological incapacity. He sang with little legato and 0 radiance with a voice extra suited to Tristan. Skelton’s ‘Nur eine Waffe taugt’ (‘But one weapon serves’) on the opera’s shut – no matter your private perception system – actually should be a summation of all that has gone earlier than and underscore the transcendence of the ultimate moments. Despite the substantial efforts of Edward Gardner, his dedicated choruses and the gifted musicians of the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra the ending remained slightly earthbound.
Gardner’s conducting of Parsifal had the Reginald Goodall-like expansiveness of a (equally) nice musician who is aware of each notice of the rating. There was loads of ethereal ambiance and, notably, delicate assist for his singers.
Jim Pritchard
Singers:
Stuart Skelton – Parsifal
Ricarda Merbeth – Kundry
Johan Reuter – Amfortas
Brindley Sherratt – Gurnemanz
Ólafur Sigurdarson – Klingsor
Reinhard Hagen – Titurel
Eirik Grøtvedt – First Grail Knight
Changdai Park – Second Grail Knight
Ingeborg Gillebo – First Esquire
Monika Jägerová – Second Esquire / Voice from Above
John Olsen – Third Esquire
Erlend Tvinnereim – Fourth Esquire
Agnieszka Adamczak – First Flowermaiden
Lydia Hoen Tjore – Second Flowermaiden
Olivera Tičević – Third Flowermaiden
Emily Pogorelc – Fourth Flowermaiden
Ingeborg Gillebo -Fifth Flowermaiden
Margrethe Fredheim – Sixth Flowermaiden
Concert staging:
Director and Stage idea, Casting advisor – Nicolai Riise
Lighting designer – Ivar Skjørestad
Costume designer – Cathrine Ahlsen
Assistant Conductor and Sound producer – Aage Richard Meyer