Bayreuth Festival - Parsifal

Published Friday 29 August 2008 at 13:30 by Penelope Turing

All Bayreuth lovers have awaited this new Parsifal with either excitement or anxiety, since it replaces the 2004 production (by Schlingensief) which turned Wagner’s story upside down and ended by showing a video of a putrifying rabbit.

The new producer, Stefan Herheim, is Norwegian and, like the conductor Daniele Gatti, is new to Bayreuth.

More with Wagner than with many other composers, every member of an audience is likely to find their own revelation or inspiration, and a successful staging is one that is simple enough to allow all such perceptions to develop. Harheim is tempted by adding some ‘ideas’, but emerges triumphant because this is simply a great musical performance.

The producer’s idea here is expressed by setting the first act in an apparently stately home of the 19th century. This, like all the set designs by Heike Scheele and costumes by Gesine Vollm, is handsome and effective, if a little confusing. The second act should end with Klingsor’s downfall when Parsifal makes the sign of the cross with the sacred spear - now a magic gun destroys a scene smothered in swastikas.

But the third act, rightly, brings peace and spiritual triumph. Gatti shows himself to be one of the finest Wagner conductors of the present day. Christopher Ventris, if not a great Parsifal, is a very good one. Mihoko Fujimura sing Kundry most beautifully. Detlef Roth is a fine Amfortas and Thomas Jesatko a good Klingsor. But it is Kwangchul Youn’s Gurnemanz that sets the seal of greatness on this production - strong, wise, infinitely tender. Can you remember Hans Hotter in this role?