Which operas are set in Spain? If you’ve come up with “Carmen” and “The Barber of Seville”, well done. If you’ve said “Parsifal”, then you deserve a special prize.The plot of Wagner’s final opera is so symbolic – he called it the piece a “Sacred Festival Play” instead of an opera - that it’s hard to think of it having any earthly location at all. But the composer actually set the action in Montserrat in northern Spain, renaming the area “Montsalvat” in his libretto.To hear “Parsifal” in Spain thus feels like something of a homecoming, especially since performances in the Iberian peninsular are pretty rare: the last time it was at Madrid’s Teatro Real was in 2001. But despite their relative unfamiliarity with the score, the Madrid musicians play miraculously well under conductor Semyon Bychkov in a new production. The glowing warmth of the strings, the mysteriously floating brass chords, and the powerful climaxes are all present, just as they need to be. But there’s a remarkable fleetness too, and the ensemble responds to the singers’ nuances with electrifying accuracy.Greater than all this, perhaps, is Bychkov’s sense of journey through the five-and-a-half hour score. From the very first phrase, and through all the thematic transformations, you know you’re in the hands of someone telling you a clear and profound musical story.Top vocal honours go to Anja Kampe as Kundry, the conflicted temptress to tries to prevent Parsifal rescuing a holy spear, and returning it to the Knights of the Grail. Her tireless voice rides the orchestra, and she’s as good at conveying seductiveness as she is anguish. Franz-Josef Selig is noble and focussed as the veteran Grail Knight Gurnemanz, and his diction is a miracle of clarity. Christian Elsner is a thrilling, clarion-voiced Parsifal too, and highly touching in his scenes of awakening compassion.Detlef Roth (Amfortas, the Grail King) and Evgeny Nikitin (Klingsor, the antagonist) aren’t quite in the same league: the former lacks power, and the latter inserts odd little grunts before many of his phrases.Director Claus Guth updates the action to the immediate aftermath of WWI, and sets the action in a decaying sanatorium. He suggests that the Grail Knights are a lost and ruined community, like the defeated Germans, and ready for a new saviour to lead them: their redeemer, Parsifal, is thus portrayed at the end as a proto-Hitler figure. It’s a thoughtful concept – even though it plays against the score – but is over-diluted by some other storytelling additions.The Grail King Amfortas and the evil Klingsor are portrayed here as feuding brothers, but this narrative twist isn’t explored in any detail. As a piece of underpowered domestic drama in a heavily symbolic piece, it ultimately feels irrelevant.The production will be broadcast by the European Broadcast Union on May 21: catch the wonderful musical riches if you have a chance.“Parsifal” is at Teatro Real, Madrid, until April 30
↧