By
BAYREUTH, Germany — A large
security force, with police officers and checkpoints, was present on Monday for
the opening of this summer’s Bayreuth Festival, featuring the premiere of a new
production of Wagner’s “Parsifal.” This was understandable, given the tensions
here in southern Germany after a spate of violent attacks — four in just the
last week, at least two of which were perpetrated by individuals claiming ties
to radical Islamic groups.
Bayreuth administrators had
special cause to be worried. Early news reports suggested that the production,
by the German director Uwe Eric Laufenberg, was disrespectful of Muslims. It was rumored that in a scene in Act II,
the Flower Maidens under the spell of the demonic sorcerer Klingsor are
presented as temptresses in Islamic dress covering skimpy undergarments.
As for the threats the
festival is grappling with, the night before “Parsifal” opened, a Syrian
refugee who had been denied asylum in Germany was turned away from a music
festival in Ansbach, some 70 miles from Bayreuth, and set off a suicide bomb, killing himself and injuring many. This “Parsifal” production, which
focuses on what unites us across religious lines, could hardly be more
relevant.
Ryan McKinny, right foreground, as Amfortas in his
crown of thorns.CreditEnrico Nawrath/Bayreuther Festpiele
This staging is indeed rich
with Muslim imagery. But Mr. Laufenberg’s sensitive, visually arresting production
offers a searching exploration of Wagner’s complex, often baffling final opera.
With an excellent cast, headed by the clarion tenor Klaus Florian Vogt in the title role, and the conductor Hartmut Haenchen drawing radiant
sound and striking transparency from the festival orchestra, this was a sublime
and provocative “Parsifal.”
In an interview in the program
book, Mr. Laufenberg explains that he sees the opera as not exactly religious,
but as “pan-religious,” or “post-religious,” a work that goes “beyond religion”
and that at the same time “explores the origin of religion.” His production
certainly underlines the explicitly Christian elements of an opera that is
about a band of knights devoted to the protection of the holy grail, who
experience a spiritual crisis as their leader, Amfortas, suffers a mysterious
wound. In a daring performance by the American bass-baritone Ryan McKinny, this
Amfortas is a handsome man in his 30s who appears during the ritual ceremony of
Act I as a stand-in for Christ on the cross, wearing a loincloth and a crown of
thorns, dripping blood from the wound on his side that will not heal.
To convey the continuous
crisis this community of knights is enduring, Mr. Laufenberg chose to set the
story not in the libretto’s Gothic Spain, but in a place where Christianity
feels under threat. The knights seem to occupy a battle-torn, crumbling church
in the Middle East, in roughly modern times. Soldiers in fatigues with assault
weapons keep watch over the knights. The church space is dominated by a huge
basin, like a baptismal font, where two of Amfortas’s men take him for a
healing bath.
It’s clear that these knights
practice charity in their town. At the start of the performance, we see people
in need sleeping alongside the knights on cots, even a family with a baby
carriage. Mr. Laufenberg’s stage imagery blurs religious distinctions in
affecting ways. Wagner’s mysterious Kundry, who serves the knights, is an
ageless woman who has suffered for centuries, yearning for redemption. She is
also a classic femme fatale. All those qualities come through in the
performance of the soprano Elena Pankratova, who brings an alluring blend of
cool, gleaming sound and piercing expressivity.
From left,
the bass-baritone Gerd Grochowski as Klingsor, and the tenor Klaus Florian Vogt
as Parsifal. Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther Festpiele
Mr. Laufenberg aptly commented
in his interview that no character in Wagner says and knows so much, yet
reveals so little of himself, as Gurnemanz, a veteran knight, respected by all.
This production boasts the German bass Georg Zeppenfeld, whose voice carries
natural heft and authority without a trace of huffiness or posturing. Trim and
purposeful, wearing glasses and a simple cap, he exudes patience and
understanding, even when exasperated by Parsifal’s denseness.
With his long, fair hair and
physical restlessness, Mr. Vogt makes a baffled Parsifal, the young, rootless
man who seems to chance upon the community. Is he the prophesied innocent who
can redeem the knights by his experience of compassion? Or is he, as Gurnemanz
at first concludes, just a fool? Mr. Vogt’s impressive voice is focused and
penetrating, yet meltingly tender in soft, high-lying phrases.
For Act II, which takes place
in Klingsor’s castle, the set transforms into a vaguely Islamic temple. The twisted
Klingsor (the strong bass-baritone Gerd Grochowski), who once tried to be one
of the knights, now hates them. But his ambivalence is suggested by the room
full of crucifixes that he secretly maintains. His Flower Maidens do appear at
first in black robes covering all but their faces. When Parsifal comes into
their midst, and they remove those garments, they’re wearing cheesy-looking
outfits, like storybook exotic Arabian dancers. Mr. Laufenberg may be inviting
us to see the scene as a little ridiculous. Some devotees of Wagner’s score
feel that the maidens’ waltzing music of seduction is, by intention, sickly
sweet, an interpretation that comes through here.
In Act III, Parsifal, who has
spent years wandering and lost, returns to the sanctuary of the knights, where
his spiritual transformation is completed through the metaphoric act of
baptism. Amfortas, now grown old and wrinkled, is asked to perform the grail
ritual for his father, who has died. In this staging, the shaken ruler is
turned to not just by his band of Christian knights, but also by Jews wearing
prayer shawls and Muslims carrying prayer books.
Mr. Laufenberg skirts cliché
with this idea. The scene could have come across like some banal moment of
Wagnerian kumbaya. Yet, the choral writing here is a babble of desperate,
clamoring voices, a quality enhanced by this powerful concept. The message, it
seems, is that everyone is confounded by spiritual issues and that we’re all in
this together. At the end, the knights, and all the people in the community,
wander off into a misty distance as the houselights brighten, signaling that
the audience, too, is part of this redemptive act.
Correction:
July 26, 2016
An earlier version of this review misstated the day of the bombing in Ansbach, Germany. It was on Sunday night, not on Monday, the day “Parsifal” opened.
An earlier version of this review misstated the day of the bombing in Ansbach, Germany. It was on Sunday night, not on Monday, the day “Parsifal” opened.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/arts/music/review-a-sublime-and-provocative-parsifal-at-bayreuth-festival-wagner.html?rref=collection%2Fspotlightcollection%2Fclassical-music-reviews
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario