First, you should know that Wagnerian operas are opera’s answer to baseball. Don’t get me wrong, I love baseball, and I love Wagnerian opera, but let’s be honest. There are worthwhile rewards, but both are really slow-moving; the pace can be awfully deliberate between the crests of tension and excitement. Now for baseball, you have hot dogs, peanuts, beer, the team mascot, and the seventh inning stretch to fill in the troughs. With Richard Wagner’s operas, all you got is the music. Fortunately, the music is what makes it worth it. Wagner’s music paints the stage; it can hang in the air like a cloud or turn the color of emotion in high resolution; it can be the play-by-play announcer telling you what is happening or the runner on second base signaling you which pitch is coming next. And, if Wagnerian opera is like baseball, Parsifal goes deep into extra innings, five hours’ worth.
I had wanted to see Parsifal for some time, but no company in the mid-Atlantic has performed it in the last several years, if ever, and for god’s sake, it’s a five hour long video. However, we are now on coronavirus time, and with all the opera houses closed, I’m sheltering in place with time on my hands. Now, it happens that Met Opera on Demand has two video recordings of the opera available for streaming, one from 2013 and one from way back in 1992, which I will call Parsifal 1 and Parsifal 2. I only intended to watch one, but which one? Parsifal 1 is a modern telling of the story with excellent sound quality, and with performers that I know, while Parsifal 2 is a traditional, costumed production but with not such great sound quality. So, I chose Parsifal 1, but then…...I kept wondering if I’d like the more traditional version better; so, I watched Parsifal 2 as well: ten hours of Parsifal. It helped that I really liked the opera.
Parsifal is a name that means “pure fool”. The opera was Wagner’s last, even though its planning began 25 years before its premiere in 1882. Wagner wrote the libretto for his three-act opera based on Wolfram von Eschenbach’s poem “Parzifal”, a tale of an Arthurian knight and the Holy Grail. The composer intended Parsifal to be a “festival play for the consecration of the stage”, the stage being his own opera house, Bayreuth in Germany; there was a mercenary element to the decision as the family held the rights to it and the proceeds for thirty years. Not all countries were signatories to such rights, and the first Metropolitan Opera performance was in 1903, but mostly even the famous and mighty had to visit Bayreuth in order to see Parsifal for 30 years.
A quick plot intro: On one side of Monsalvat in Spain is the great hall of the knights who are keepers of the Holy Grail and on the other is the magic castle of Klingsor, a man who wanted to be a knight, but he was denied because of his impure thoughts and turned to the dark arts. Klingsor has conjured up a platoon of beautiful maidens to lure knights entering his area away from their vows of chastity. The knights are led by their beleaguered king, Amfortas, who was seduced by Klingsor’s agent, Kundry, provding Klingsor with the chance to wound Amfortas with his own Holy Spear. Klingsor also captured the spear and escaped, hoping to eventually capture the Grail itself. Amfortas, having defiled himself, suffers a wound that will not heal, leaving him in shame and misery and his troup without leadership. However, he was told by angels to await a redeemer, a pure fool made wise by compassion, who would heal his wound and provide redemption. The opera opens with the lead knight, Gurnemanz telling the story as Parsifal arrives on the scene, unknowingly the chosen one, a young man who does not even know his own name. The rest of the tale is about his quest and ascension to become the redeemer, offering salvation to all.
A scene from Parsifal 1: Parsifal (Jonas Kaufmann) dips the Holy Spear into the Holy Grail held by Kundry (Katerina Dalayman) while Gurnemanz (Rene Papé) looks on while standing. Photo by Ken Howard; courtesy of the Metropolitan Opera.
Parsifal 2 is a classical production with mountain scenery and knights in costume. Parsifal 1 is a modern production with spare costumes, a bleak landscape, and intriguing symbolism. Both productions have a stream that runs through the middle of the stage carrying water and then blood. The Metropolitan Orchestra and Chorus provides music of shimmering beauty under both conductors. Both productions have extraordinary casts.
Credits below for Parsifal 1 (2013) and Parsifal 2 (1992):
Parsifal – Jonas Kaufmann…………..Siegfried Jerusalem
Gurnemanz – Rene Papé…………………….Kurt Moll
Kundry – Katerina Dalayman……….Waltraud Meier
Amfortas – Peter Mattei…………………Bernd Weikl
Klingsor – Evgeny Nikitin……………….Franz Mazura
Director – Barbara Willis Sweete…..Phebe Berkowitz
Production – François Girard……………..Otto Schenk
Set Design – Michael Levine………………Günther Schneider-Siemssen
Conductor – Daniele Gatti…………………James Levine
Lets return to the baseball analogy for a moment and compare the teams position by position for the main players.
Parsifal (tenor) – I give the nod to Kaufmann, while he is not that convincing as a fool, when he turns on the power as his character matures, his gravitas is impressive. Jerusalem is very good, but never seems to have suffered that much or rise to the level of redeemer. Advantage: Parsifal 1.
Gurnemanz (bass) – Gurnemanz, the senior knight, is effectively the narrator and the reasoned, caring anchor for the story. Moll is good, but Papé is outstanding, able to command the stage a little more, and I never get tired of hearing that voice. Advantage: Parsifal 1.
Kundry (soprano) – Kundry is a wild woman who laughed at Christ on the cross and was cursed never to die; she has been trapped by both Klingsor’s curse and service to the knights, a complex role. Dalayman gives a solid performance, which emphasizes the mother aspect and most effectively portrays a tortured soul. Meier’s acting turned me off a bit in act I; she sometimes appeared more displeased than tortured. However, she has an especially beautiful voice and her performance in act II as the seductress wins out with me, and she is also strong in act III. After seeing her in act II, I want to find a dvd of her playing Isolde. Advantage: Parsifal 2.
Amfortas (baritone) – Weikel is good with a lovely voice, but Mattei stepped it up in this one. His powerful characterization of the defeated, longing for death king is much stronger. Advantage: Parsifal 1.
Klingsor (bass) – Nitikin does the relatively short role of the evil one much better than Mazura. Advantage: Parsifal 1.
The minor players on both teams all did credible jobs. Clearly, my preferences for the cast is weighted strongly towards Parsifal 1. However, for this comparison the staging also plays a strong role in the overall impact.
For me, the traditional staging of Parsifal 2 was fine, but it didn’t really offer much more than an appropriate backdrop. Well, Klingsor throwing the spear at Parsifal and Parsifal catching it in the air was a neat trick. Some scenes I liked better in 1 and some in 2. I liked the maiden seduction scene in act II better in Parsifal 1, but Waltraud Meier in that scene is not to be missed in Parsifal 2. At first, I was inclined not to like Parsifal 1 because of its bleak modern staging but it won me over. In fact for this allegory where “time becomes space”, the medieval setting is not so important; it is all about the message. The symbolism with the apocalyptic landscape, the arrangement of men and women, and visuals in the background of clouds and planets and closeups of human skin were intriguing. In the opening scene, the performers are seated on stage in opera-going attire, then, men come forward taking off their coats and ties and watches and all turn around and slowly go to work presenting the story. They are we, and it is our story. And it is Wagner’s glorious music in both videos.
The Fan Experience: Parsifal 1 will be available for free streaming on the Met Opera website (metopera.org) on Thursday night, April 9, and for 24 hours. Met Opera is offering nightly free viewings of selected opera videos during the coronavirus pandemic (Nightly Met Opera Streams). Videos and sound recordings in Met Opera on Demand are available for unlimited viewing through a monthly or yearly subscription; they also offer a seven-day free trial. The operas can be played on mobile devices and on smart TVs using Apple TV, Roku, and other such devices. And of course, when watching a video at home you can even add your own popcorn and beer, and not only get up to stretch, but hit the pause button to have an intermission any time you want.