Opera on 3 - 21.05.11 Wagner's Parsifal

[Flosshilde]

I saw the ENO Parsifal, and am looking forward to hearing how it sounds. I was much more impressed by Tomlinson than was Flosshilde: the stunningly clear diction and the expressive stage presence more than made up for the occasional wobble, for me. And Gurnemanz is supposed to be old!

I've no argument with Tomlinson's characterisation of the part - it was, for me, an interesting portrayal of an old man who seemed confused & disturbed by what was going on. In the final scene he siezed on the spear as if it was the only thing he could understand. However, fine interpretation dramatically as it was, Tomlinson's almost constant (more than occasional) wobble menat that musically it wasn't so good.

(& I've just remembered that I won't be able to listen on Saturday anyway as I'm going to a wedding )

[NickWraight]

I went to the last night of the recent ENO run and was gripped from start to finish despite attending 2 days after returning from NZ! John Tom was on fabulous form that night, all the words were audible with very little wobble and amazing stage presence, as was the conductor and band. I took a very long time to appreciate the piece and this performance completed the journey. The current ROH production left me totally cold.

[Flosshilde]

Any comments on last night's broadcast?

I listened to bits & JT's wobble was just as intrusive as when I saw it. I did wonder at the time if it was because it seemed to be a very slow performance (musically) (did anyone make a note of the timings?) & it was difficult to stretch the sound of the English text to fit the music - English, I feel, compared with Italian & German, is a rather abrupt language, with short words & few drawn-out vowel sounds.

[ostuni]

I heard nearly all of Act 1: not really ideal conditions as I was in the car driving back home (but I was by myself, so I could have it on very loud!). And I thought of your remarks, Flosshilde: the wobble was certainly more noticeable without the visuals - not surprising, really. Perceptions of vocal quality are very personal - for me, I'd still say that I was sometimes (rather than almost constantly) disturbed by the wobble. But I absolutely agree about those vowel sounds: I hadn't really noticed in the theatre, but on radio some of it did sound rather strange. OTOH, my German isn't good enough to be able to understand every word in an original-language performance, so the ability to understand every word of Gurnemanz's storytelling certainly adds something.

I didn't stay with the broadcast - not because I wasn't enjoying it, but it had already been a pretty long day, playing some very different music (Dufay, Binchois!), so I needed a break from it all when I got home.

[Flosshilde]

Yes, Gurnemanz certainly does have a lot to say - a bit like the Ancient Mariner! I bet those pages & young knights got a bit fed up with his stories - he probably tells them every day.

In the theatre, of course, there were surtitles - I found myself referring to them probably more than I needed to, being lazy & therefore concentrated less on what Gurnemanz was saying & perhaps more on how JT was singing it.

[perfect wagnerite]

It was a slow performance - objectively too slow, but objectivity isn't always the point in Parsifal, and it certainly wasn't here. I thought the conducting and playing very fine, the singing (apart from Iain Paterson's Amfortas) less so - John Tomlinson is husbanding his resources very carefully these days and I don't expect we'll hear him in any more big Wagner roles, but, as Verdi wrote about Morel's Iago, hearing him speak the role would be more illuminating than hearing most of his peers singing it. As I know the piece very well in German, it did sound strange in English, and not always helpfully so. Some of the translation was quite approximate.

I haven't seen this production, and family illness prevented me from getting to the Coliseum in March. Memorable interpretations in the theatre include Goodall with the ENO (Siegfried Jerusalem coming in for an indisposed Warren Ellsworth at the last minute, and singing in German while all around him sang in English which, for an opera that is partly about alienation and identity crisis, seemed strangely appropriate) and Haitink at the ROH c. 1990 conducting a strange, Cowper Powys-like production which started like a morality play being performed in a ruined church in wartime England, before settling into more conventional mode. It was an idea that I rather liked.

Recordings - Boulez (my preferred set), Knappertsbusch (1951 and 1963), Goodall. The Solti is worth hearing IMO for Gottlob Frick, but you have to turn a blind eye to Solti's sentimentalised and rhythmically wooden conducting. I would love to hear Norrington conduct this score; I think a lean string sound with greatly-reduced vibrato, allowing the wind to shine through, and with tempi (like those of Boulez) closer to what Wagner would have expected, would be a revelation.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

There was a discussion on another thread not so long ago about the merits of singing Wagner in English, with particular reference to Goodall's Ring and Mastersingers. I think translations from German work better than those from French and Italian, possibly because neither German nor English flatter the singing voice quite so much as the Romance languages.

I am prepared to be challenged on this one, as I'm not a brilliant linguist.

[Flosshilde]

I've always rather liked German sung - possibly because of my early (& continuing) liking for Bach, & listening to the Sunday morning cantata broadcasts in the '70s - more so than French, which is far to soft a language; it seems to blur into one, rather sibillant, sound.

I realise that I forgot a Parsifall production - Scottish Opera's, which I did enjoy. Nothing spectacular or too outlandish, if you except Klingsor's enlarged crinoline dress & the dressing tables with mirrors for the flower maidens.

[DracoM]

A few random thnoughts:

[a] John Tom does rambling old man Gurnemanz pretty OK- liked the AM analogy above. Diction good for me.
[b] Stuart Skelton seems a very promising Parsifal - his shift of timbre in Act 3 was well calculated.
[c] Ian Patterson's Amfortas I liked - plenty of presence, intelligent singing, but maybe he can make that sense in Act 3 of being backed into a corner by former knights now enemies much angrier and do it well?
[d] Band were in top form, and Wigglesworth can certainly do 'Parsifal'. Got the scale and pacing pretty near dead on for me.
[e] Jane Dutton for me was a real let-down: inclined to be shrill under pressure, and a lot of Act 2 she is under pressure, or made it sound like that, and as seductive as a jelly baby
[f] But the biggest let down for me was a deeply disappointing and invertebrate Klingsor. Maybe here, Wigglesworth might have pushed things on a bit to bring out the best in him.
[g] Chorus OK, a bit under nourished, men needed to be more aggressive in Act 3, and the women sounded impossibly matronly in Act 2.

BUT
my real puzzle was in the mismatch between the music, the libretto and the set AND John Deathridge's very strange analysis of Act 3.

I am really not sure how you can divorce the avalanche of stuff about Spring, regeneration. redemption, healing, Good Friday, new life out of suffering etc etcetc and suggest that the ending is sentimental. It's what Wagner wrote, and just because you dislike the symnbolism does not mean you can simply ignore it and re-fashion the end in your image, can you? It would be like Woptan embracing Siegfried, and Siegfried not dying in Act 3 of Gotterdammerung and he and Brunnhoilde walk into Valhalla with Daddy Wotan and everything is hunky dory.

Very puzzled by all that. Have seen the production on Sky Arts a year ago, and I still find it utterly perverse given what Wagner actually wrote.

[Flosshilde]

I sort of agree with your 'but', Draco, but I also liked the end, and it did make sense, in a way. I can see that Parsifal didn't want to be saddled with being the knight's king; there was no reason for it, he wasn't one of the knights but had, in the words (more or less) of the director, crashed into their midst, & was then thrown out by Gurnemanz, before finding himself back among them. It could be said that he was the only one who was/is a positive figure, taking positive action (Kundry does as well - she's the other 'outsider'). He really has no responsibility for them - he'd retrieved the spear, healed Amfortas, as part of the process of becoming a whole person (the discovery of empathy), but why should he then immure himself in a community that is solely concerned with itself?

(there is also the question of who was Lohengrin's mother, if Parsifal stayed at Montsalvat? Kundry would seem to be the only woman who had any association with them. And, for that matter, who was Amfortas's mother? Klingsor was banished because of his sexual passion - but Titurel presumably wasn't a stranger to such feelings.)

[DracoM]

< He really has no responsibility for them - he'd retrieved the spear, healed Amfortas, as part of the process of becoming a whole person >

But Act 3 is predicated entirely on the opposite assumption, namely that Parsifal has undertaken the journey of suffering precisely to find the moral power and knowledge / means to heal Amfortas and thus re-connect the knightly community with its values. If Titurel is dead, if Amfortas finds carrying on too self-damaging - typically egocentric early 21st century me-ness - than the community does and is scattered as it was before by Klingsor's depredatikons. BUT Parsifal moves frok dumb incomprehension to apprehension and responsibility in self-sacrificing to bring healing into that community, making it feel whole again in some way.

I do not go along with the view that he now becomes some sort of Ancient Mariner figure who then abandons Montsalvat having saved it and wanders the world for ....well, for what? He has returned to live out what he has learnt - wisdom through suffering. He has learnt it not for self-fulfillment - a typically selfish notion of today's world - but very specifically as a community act, to bring it back to Montsalvat as a life-enhancing philosophy.

The finale in the final grail ceremony - look at the key it finishes up in - is not, as Deathridge suggested, sentimental but organically and necessarily affirmative given what Wagner has set out to explore.

[Flosshilde]

Like all great works of art (& Parsifal is a great work) it is open to a number of interpretations. Parsifal, in his wanderings, has become a whole person - I think it's reasonable to suggest that he could believe that that includes engagement with the world - looking outward. The Grail temple & its community is solely inward looking - it is focussed on the grail, as an end in itself - not something I find especially life-enhancing, more life-denying. It has no engagement with the outside world - one of its few contacts is Lohengrin's excursion to Brabant, & that ended with him returning to Monsalvat.

[ARBurton]

I would be very interested if anyone happens to know the date of the performance which was recorded. (Being a bit of an anorak...)

[french frank]

I would be very interested if anyone happens to know the date of the performance which was recorded. (Being a bit of an anorak...)

Hello ARB

The answer may well turn up in a day or two. People who are at performances usually spot the microphones.

[Flosshilde]

Just had a look in the programme & it was the 8th March.