Parsifal (ROH)

[Richard Tarleton]

I've not got my bins with me RT - any chance of a quotation?

I'm sure they won't mind - "What to look out for in 2014 - Rebekah Brooks The opera- moving story of doomed romance between heroine RB and tragic hero Andy Coulson....WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: "Ignore this opera. It is in exceptionally bad taste" His Honour Justice Saunders

Accompanied by....shot of Simon O'Neill/Parsifal clutching Kundry/Angela Denoke in Rebekah Brooks wig...- I'm sure they saw it here first

[amateur51]

I'm sure they won't mind - "What to look out for in 2014 - Rebekah Brooks The opera- moving story of doomed romance between heroine RB and tragic hero Andy Coulson....WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: "Ignore this opera. It is in exceptionally bad taste" His Honour Justice Saunders

Accompanied by....shot of Simon O'Neill/Parsifal clutching Kundry/Angela Denoke in Rebekah Brooks wig...- I'm sure they saw it here first

[PhilipT]

It does seem quite bizarre, it's hard to imagine that anyone signs up for Parsifal without the knowledge that it goes on for... quite some time, and thus has to leave the split second it ends.

Just asking, but did the ROH performance stick to the schedule? I 'signed up' to the Proms performance this year, and got a place in the front row. It overran by 25 minutes, which is catastrophic after 10pm on a Sunday for anyone dependent on public transport. I understand that the bars and restaurants (but not, of course, the paying punters) were advised of "revised timings" before it started. Many people left before the end; I stayed on at the cost of a £55 taxi fare. In the absence of further information I'd be inclined to give "that x$%!" the benefit of the doubt.

[Frances_iom]

Just asking, but did the ROH performance stick to the schedule?

I too will be interested - the printed programme on the night stated finish at approx 10:40 the two prior acts had stuck reasonably close to the printed approx timings but I decided to skip the final act - partly on the basis of that R3 broadcast which would have seen me getting home nearer 1am but mainly because having seen the production I was willing to settle for my memory of the broadcast (ie non visual) music

[David-G]

Covent Garden timings are usually pretty accurate.

[Simon B]

Just asking, but did the ROH performance stick to the schedule?

Yes, near enough, to within perhaps 5 minutes. However, unless my memory is failing, the finish time on the ROH website had cca 30 minutes added to it in the months between booking and the first performance of the run (i.e. after extensive rehearsal and with all the carefully timed logistics of a theatrical presentation in place).

Parsifal is a temporal accident waiting to happen. 10% slower in some bits of a normal mixed 2 hour concert gets lost in the noise of the original approximation and slack between items is adjusted on-the-fly. 10% slower than typical across the consistently stately arc of Parsifal is ~23 minutes and there are no malleable gaps. In a meaningless coincidence, Elder and Pappano took about the same time (~260 mins) to get through the music. Sinopoli at Bayreuth took 263, meanwhile there's apparently a Boulez recording in which he took 210.

The 235 minutes given in the Proms guide did seem a bit optimistic to me. In the actual concert programme, the timing of Act I in particular was way off. As the promoter, and so the responsible party, presumably someone at the BBC looks up standard timings, adds on standard margins for intervals and faffing about and in it goes, with a disclaiming "approximately".

I sympathise, having recently had to choose to tear up my vastly cheaper advance ticket and fork out ~£60 for a fresh walkup one for the later train home, rather than walk out of a drastically overrunning concert by one of the big London orchestras.

I'd like to point out that it wasn't me who wrote

"that x$%!"

However, I suspect the point was mostly not that someone had to leave, but that they waited until that moment instead of 10 seconds later and, moreover, crashed about avoidably with disregard for everyone nearby in the process. I'd be willing to bet you would only do the former under the direst provocation and the latter essentially never.