Speranza
(c) HEIDI WALESON
Director François Girard
transports Wagner's final opera to a postapocalyptic period.
In
an imaginative new production of Richard Wagner's "Parsifal" that is perfectly
suited to the music, François Girard successfully transforms the opera, which
opened at the Metropolitan Opera on Friday, from a faux-Christian rite into a
timeless story about a beleaguered community that is held together—barely—by a
sacred ritual that is itself under threat.
Arresting, consistently absorbing
stage pictures expertly follow the mournful flow of this slow-moving epic, while
a powerhouse cast of singers and the Met Orchestra under the sure direction of
Daniele Gatti ensure that the evening has both gravity and momentum.
In
Wagner's libretto, the Holy Grail is protected by an order of knights.
Their
leader, Amfortas, suffers horribly from a wound that will not heal, and can be
cured only by a holy fool who is "enlightened by compassion."
Girard moves
"Parsifal" into a postapocalyptic time.
In Acts I and III, Michael Levine's
striking set is a parched, treeless landscape bisected by a stream which flows
with blood, a symbol of the wound that divides the community.
The knights, in
modern white shirts and black trousers (the costumes are by Thibault
Vancraenenbroeck), huddle in a circle on one side of it.
On the other is a
silent, excluded group of women, an indication that Girard isn't going along
with the libretto's premise that forbidden sexual desire is the root of all
evil.
Rather, it is a symbol of a fractured society.
In Act II Parsifal, the
"holy fool," descends into the wound itself—the Met stage is covered with a pool
of "blood."
Ghostly flower maidens with long black hair and white dresses tempt
him in Carolyn Choa's creepy, seductive choreography.
He resists them and the
seductress Kundry, whose white dress and bed grow red with the blood as she
splashes around in it.
Parcifal recovers the lost Grail spear, kills the sorcerer
Klingsor, and returns to the knights to heal Amfortas's wound and become their
leader.
David Finn's sensitive lighting dramatizes the deterioration of the
knights' home between Acts I and Act III, and Peter Flaherty's video designs are
eloquent, stylized abstractions—clouds, planets, landscape and even women's
bodies—that enhance the drama of the transformation scenes and the Grail
ritual.
Ritual remains a central feature of this production.
Yet Mr. Girard
also builds a poignantly human story through the principal singers.
As
Gurnemanz, the éminence grise of the grail knights, bass René Pape was
magisterial and warm, with a penetrating delivery that enlivened his long
monologues.
Baritone Peter Mattei seemed to be living the agony of Amfortas,
both in the fierceness of his singing and his halting, excruciating attempts to
walk.
------
Jonas Kaufmann made Parsifal complicated and vivid, from the adolescent
shrug with which he conveyed his initial lack of understanding to the pure,
messianic authority of his final transformation.
Evgeny Nikitin was a properly
brutal, slashing Klingsor, and Katarina Dalayman brought controlled passion to
Kundry, expertly crafting the seduction scene.
Girard has her lift the Grail
for the final ritual, as the women and the men mix together onstage for the
first time. Wagner might not have approved, but the gesture of reconciliation,
overriding the libretto's misogyny and obsession with male purity, fit the music
and completed Girard's moving, modern vision.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
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