Parsifal: A Love Story?

Angela Denoke as Kundry & Simon O'Neill as Parsifal. Photos: Clive Barda

Yesterday I mentioned that the Royal Opera's new Parsifal, directed by Stephen Langridge, seemed rather a curate's egg as cooked by Heston Blumenthal. But the more one thinks about it, the deeper it goes. What follows contains spoilers aplenty, so if you don't want to know the results, look away now.

Langridge's concept is startling, thought-provoking and at times extremely disturbing. It is a very contemporary interpretation, some of which works, some of which doesn't, and some of which seems better after you've had 36+ hours to digest it.

First of all, take the giant cube that occupies the centre of the stage. The first impression is that this is infelicitous design - it resembles a set of Portaloos, or alternatively an outsized SAD lamp (goodness knows our knights need one). More to the point, the hammy gestured flashbacks enacted within it (see image below) are unnecessary distractions and add little of discernible value to the whole, while making it necessary for the real action to take place on the peripheries of the stage.

But wait. Our friend Pliable at Overgrown Path has pointed out that the cube has resonances from Islam. There's another image here... The set design, furthermore, places the holy spring at the back of the stage in a rectangular tub bearing no small resemblance to a mosque's howz for ritual purification.

So are these Grail Knights a kind of Wagnerian Al Qaida? As they send four initiates out into the world in woolly hats, armed with pistols, at the end of the Grail ceremony, it seems not entirely impossible. What's certain is that at the heart of this ceremony lies something dark and desperate. At its outset, in a ritual motion, the knights take knives and spear their own hands.

The ailing Amfortas, bound to the cult/temple/whatever-it-is by his father's demand, doesn't want to carry out the Grail ceremony and begs not to have to do it. The question, though, is always why? Isn't lifting the Holy Grail a beautiful thing to do? Not here - because the Grail is a young boy, and Amfortas has to slash his stomach. No wonder he doesn't want to do it. The boy then passes out and is carried in a classic pieta tableau around the knights, who reach out towards him. But when he comes round, he sits on a bench wrapped in a sheet, ignored and alone, apparently no longer of any significance. Parsifal alone rushes to sit beside him; a look passes between them. This also makes sense - for what inspires human compassion as much as a child abandoned, wounded and suffering? It's the discovery of compassion that transforms the 'Pure Fool'.

The question "why?" appears to be a powerful driving force. Why is Kundry going to such lengths to cure Amfortas when she was responsible for his initial downfall? Simple: she loves him. He loves her too, but his terrible wound has come between them. And at the end, Amfortas cured, Kundry redeemed, they walk off hand in hand, away from the cult/temple/whatever-it-is to live happily ever after. Parsifal has saved Amfortas so that he can live and love and be a whole man. Parsifal opens the Grail shrine to find that the Grail - who was there earlier, a bit older than he was in Act I - has disappeared. Parsifal follows suit, walking away and exiting at the back. Job done. True Grail revealed: it is human love.

At least, I think that is what's going on. It could perhaps use a little more clarification. I may have got it completely wrong, but it's been a process of elimination: if that isn't what's happening, then what is? Pass.

The single biggest problem with the notion - which is beautiful in itself - is that while it can, with some effort, be extrapolated from Wagner's original meanings (insofar as any of us really understand them), it doesn't dovetail easily with other issues, notably that of Kundry. An astonishing character, the constantly reincarnated female version of the Wandering Jew mingled with Mary Magdalene and Venus, Kundry is released from her curse by Parsifal: not only the curse of tearlessness, but that of deathlessness. Usually she finds her rest at the opera's conclusion. Here, she may find true love, but the effect is still to diminish her significance.

Since seeing the performance I've been looking at the Royal Opera House's reactions page and found a fascinating post interpreting the production via profoundly Christian symbolism and the eucharistic litury. Scroll down and read; it's the one by Richard Davey. It makes a huge amount of sense and is wholly different from my take. Perhaps this Parsifal will be "read" in a unique and personal way by everyone who experiences it - rather like those psychological tests where you see images in an ink blot that reflect your own mind. Then it becomes fascinating on a whole new level.

So, the performances. Gerald Finley stole the show as Amfortas, in no uncertain terms. Heartbreaking, all-encompassing, impassioned, incandescent, desperately moving. Rene Pape's Gurnemanz is a true classic, but at this performance he seemed short of his best; and Angela Denoke's much-praised Kundry unfortunately went somewhat off the rails in Act II, losing control of intonation and struggling for the high notes. She was absolutely fine in Act III, but we spent part of the interval wondering whether an understudy might have to sing from a wing. Simon O'Neill's Parsifal grew from harsh-toned callow youth in Act I, breaking his own bow on realising his guilt at killing the swan, to steely, determined redeemer with voice to match. Willard White smouldered as Klingsor - the first time one might wish for an evil magician to have a bit more to do. Chorus and orchestra were on blistering form, with Tony Pappano leading an account that was sumptuously coloured, full of tension and concentrated beauty.

My tricky waltz with Wagner

I've written an article for The Independent about creating my new play, SINS OF THE FATHERS, which is premiered next Sunday in the International Wimbledon Music Festival at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond. In brief: how do you write a play about somebody you can't stand?

Incidentally, the only way I could get started was by thinking: "Well, what would Woody Allen have done?"...

Cast for our performance:
VICKY/COSIMA: Sarah Gabriel
FRANK/LISZT: Jeremy Child
WAGNER: John Sessions

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/classical/features/my-tricky-waltz-with-wagner-8940302.html

Dragon-slayer: Lance Ryan IS Siegfried

Here's my write-up for the Indy of last night at the Proms, where things are turning seriously steamy in the Ring. A slightly less packed turnout for this one, perhaps because the temperatures in the hall have been in the news, but hey, there was more air for the rest of us as we rushed back for episode 3. If this is what happens in a Wagner anniversary, please can we have another next year? I mean, he'd have been 201 - isn't that worth celebrating too?

Shock confession: this is the first time I have actually enjoyed Siegfried. The first act can be heavy going and unless you have a top-notch chap in the title role, so can the rest. It needs to be done very, very, very well, all round, to succeed (at least where my ears are concerned). This one...just flew by, with laughter, tears and suitably raised consciousness. Where's it been all my life? Canadian Heldentenor Lance Ryan as Siegfried simply owned the role and thus the evening.

If you were wondering whether to go to Gotterdammerung on Sunday, but hesitated: stop thinking and just go. I can't, as I'll be in the only other place an opera buff (never mind critic) should be just now, which is in Munich, listening to Jonas in a spot of Verdi. But even with that to look forward to, I am sick as the proverbial parrot about missing the last night of this Ring cycle.

Wagner would have loved his operas being done at the Proms: to a huge crowd of passionate enthusiasts in the arena who have come from far and wide for the occasion and pay just a fiver to get in. He wanted admission at Bayreuth to be free. It didn't prove very practical, of course, but that was the original idea.

On your feet! It's Proms time

The sun is shining, Andy Murray's in the final and next week it's time for the Proms to begin. This season is stuffed full of Wagner operas and I have just one word to start you off: footwear. My guide to how to make the most of the Proms is in today's Independent, along with my personal pick of ten unmissable events. And yes, there will be Korngold.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/features/on-your-feet-for-the-2013-proms-8687389.html

Die Walkure at Longborough

Feel as if I am being flown like a kite by Wagner today, after a glorious performance of Die Walkure last night at Longborough.

Here is my review for The Independent.

Please take immediate note of this man. He is a Wagner marvel. http://www.anthonynegus.co.uk/

And these two sopranos are absolutely world class:

Rachel Nicholls - Brunnhilde
Lee Bisset - Sieglinde



Nor is it a bad place to hear music, or to enjoy a quiet interval picnic overlooking the Cotswold countryside...

Dear Richard, I need to tell you something...

Dear Richard,

It's your big birthday today, so we have to do this now.

Listen, mate. I love you. I can't help it. You can't help who you love. I don't want to love you. I've kicked and screamed against it, but I can't change the way I feel. There's nothing I can do about it.

Nobody wants to love a person who is - who is - well, not very nice. I once wrote a show about your father-in-law, Liszt, and you didn't come out of it too well. Your ego is so excessive that you can seem almost buffoonlike. Cosima bolstered that ego and pandered to it. "You should have a god for a husband," you said to her once. "But I do," said Cosima. There's something almost sickly about these inflated personalities, these relationships, these terribly 19th-century concepts through which you built your days, your years, your decades. 

They're not half as sickly as King Ludwig II's obsession with you. I went round Neuschwanstein a few years back. Murals of your operas all over the place. Not that you'd recognise them from the way some of the stagings are done nowadays. I'd love to know what you'd make of the rat laboratory Lohengrin that was done a couple of years ago with Kaufmann and Harteros. (Yes, I did say "rat laboratory".... What did you say...? Oh yes. You left instructions about what you wanted. Why don't we follow them? Can't help you there, Rick.)

But look, people get that way over you. People obsess. People go crazy. People go rushing round the world to hear the Ring Cycle again and again, forking out huge sums of money to do so, because once it gets to them, they can't do without it and they need more. So we need new productions, don't we? We need new ways to inject ourselves with the sweet, irresistible, mind-bending poison of your genius. I can think of no other music that changes us so. You raise our consciousness, and once it's been raised, we can't turn back.

I don't remember the first time I heard your music. Most music reached me via osmosis, because my father used to have BBC Radio 3 on whenever he was home, from 6.45am until 11pm most days, and I had a decent ear and absorbed much of it. He had some difficulties with you, though. He loved Meistersinger above all else, and every time it was on at the Royal Opera House or Coliseum we'd go. I didn't know what to make of it when I was 15. I think I sat there waiting for the big tunes and the bit at the end of Act II where the whole town comes out to tell Sachs and Beckmesser to shut up. But Dad wouldn't go to the Ring. Nor would he touch Tristan. Let alone Parsifal. 

So it got to the point that I was in my mid twenties and I had a job on a music magazine and I'd never seen the Ring. I hadn't even heard very much of it. My college friends who'd chosen to take a special paper on the thing in the third year, taught by John Deathridge, spaced out in drugged-like ecstasy over it and taunted me about what I was missing. (You know something? They still do.) And my boss got wind of this rather large gap in my musical education and said: right, kiddo, you'd better come to Covent Garden with me. We went, and Haitink was conducting, and I will never forget coming out of Act I of Die Walküre feeling as if I was floating upside down by the ROH ceiling (which is quite high) - I literally couldn't feel my feet. I don't remember the singing, the production, or anything except the way that music of yours changed my world in minutes. And that, dear Richard, was that.

You even get to my cat, for heaven's sake. I well remember coming back from a not-very-good performance of Siegfried once and remarking that I wasn't so sure I loved you after all. I mean, if your operas are not well done, it's a very long sit, and when you understand just how bad it's going to be after seven minutes and you can't get out...sorry, I'll shut up about that now...anyway, I went home and said "I don't think I like Wagner." Next thing I knew the OH had put on the end of Siegfried in the Solti recording and there we were, up by the ceiling again. And in comes the cat, settles himself down right beside the piano, puts his ears forward and starts purring. That animal isn't called Solti for nothing.

My favourite? Parsifal, I think. I've been twice this year - hooray for The Met's cinecasts. There's real compassion in Parsifal, a lesson in empathy and pain and wisdom, woven into the music in the most subtle, exquisite, extraordinary way. Absorbed in this unique soundworld, we become someone else. We blend our spirits, and Parsifal shows us how. Besides, it was Fauré's favourite, and that's good enough for me. 

And yet, and yet... I was reading recently about your relationship with Hermann Levi. He was the first conductor of Parsifal (yes, I know you know that) and he was the son of a rabbi. He was devoted to you in a way that's perhaps more appropriate for a pet dog to be devoted - well, that's how the story struck me. You had a strange, love-hate, abuse-of-power relationship with that man, that excellent musician, that maestro to whose hands you entrusted the last and arguably the greatest of all your works. But you hated him being Jewish. You'd warn him of the rising bad feeling against those of his race and tell him to be careful. You'd taunt him. You'd pull rank, you'd pull race, and the more you put him down, the more double-edged your communication, the more he'd kiss your hands (metaphorically speaking, at least). Cosima said he was lucky to have "people like us" socialising with him and supporting him. 

You were a really nasty piece of work, Richard. You really hated the Jews. It wasn't just that you wrote one stupid dissertation on the subject. It went on and on. You and Cosima often used to talk about "the Israelites" as a matter of course when you went on your country walks, according to her diaries. It seems to have been one of your favourite topics. And take Parsifal. Hang on: Parsifal is the redeemer of the redeemer? The redeemer of Jesus Christ, you mean? What? Oh yes, Richard, you wanted your pure, compassionate hero to redeem Jesus because He was Jewish! (This is made abundantly clear in Michael Haas's excellent new book, Forbidden Music: The Jewish Composers Banned by the Nazis.) Boy, am I glad I didn't read that before I went to the Met cinecast. You wouldn't have seen me for dust. And then I'd have missed Jonas, and I'd have missed having my consciousness changed, and I'd have missed everything else you packed into that opera along with that bit of odious thinking, which is far from obvious when you listen to the music. One has to read the books to learn about it, because although your music goes into one's veins, every piece of your philosophy does not go in with it, thank heavens.

I like to think, Richard - call me naive, but it makes sense - that creative artists put the best of themselves into their works. It's the finest of you, distilled, turned into sound. There's good and bad in everyone. In you, there was more than most have of both. Perhaps it's time that the redeemer of the redeemer was able to redeem you? Or is that asking too much? Who knows? I have no answers.

I go through all this, Richard; I soul-search, I agonise; yet I still love you. You can't help who you love, you can't help how you feel. It's pure chemistry; and both physically and spiritually it's beyond your will. Loving you is like Siegmund and Sieglinde loving each other. It's like Brunnhilde and Siegfried, like Tristan and Isolde. It's always impossible, if you try to rationalise it; it's utterly transgressive; yet it's impossible to resist.

Loving you breaks all our taboos.  

And you'd have wanted it that way, because that's how it is for your characters and you know, as an artist and craftsman, that the taboos heighten emotion. So we don't just love you - we become slaves to you, because of the insecurity, the fear, the taboo-busting passion you arouse, and it is manipulative and frightening and terribly, terribly beautiful.

And we go running back for more. That's how it is. And would I miss it for anything? Nope. Not for all the green tea in Mariage Freres. Would I have missed all your wonders, your fires, your alchemy and your spirit-bolstering craziness? Never! 

How fortunate we are, we who love you, to have found you at all. I should be so lucky as to have you in my life. I accept you. I surrender. So be it.