WAGNER Parsifal
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: Richard Wagner
Genre:
Opera
Label: Bel Air Classiques
Magazine Review Date: 10/2016
Media Format: Digital Versatile Disc
Media Runtime: 252
Mastering:
DDD
Catalogue Number: BAC128
Tracks:
Composition | Artist Credit |
---|---|
Parsifal |
Richard Wagner, Composer
Andreas Schagerl, Parsifal, Tenor Anja Kampe, Kundry, Soprano Berlin Staatskapelle Berlin State Opera Chorus Daniel Barenboim, Conductor Matthias Hölle, Titurel, Bass René Pape, Gurnemanz, Bass Richard Wagner, Composer Tómas Tómasson, Klingsor, Baritone Wolfgang Koch, Amfortas, Bass-baritone |
Author: Mike Ashman
In Act 1, as recently in Salzburg (DG) and at Covent Garden (Opus Arte), de High Church ifying of the Grail scenes turns transubstantiation into cannibalism of Amfortas’s body wound. In Act 2 the set remains the same, but cleaned up with a shiny coat of paint – the village hall as nursery school room. A kooky, hair-combing Klingsor is an un PC image of a woolly-sweatered, bespectacled cuddly uncle, perhaps gone pervertedly astray. Some of his flower girls are children with dolls and skipping ropes; their ‘seduction’ of Parsifal is heartily innocent. ‘Ich sah das Kind’ has so much illustration of Parsifal’s adolescence – actors play his mother and a first sexual partner – that it’s easy to miss the worked-in detail of Anja Kampe’s performance of it. Then the kiss takes place offstage. Later both Parsifal and Kundry produce toys from their childhood, suggesting a common isolated upbringing.
In Act 3 the focus of Parsifal’s return with the spear is so much swapped to Kundry rather than Gurnemanz that it must have been hard for René Pape to maintain his part convincingly. Later we learn why. Switched from late-understanding vague liberal to fully outed reactionary, Gurnemanz vents his frustration and fear at Kundry’s physically emotional reunion with Amfortas by murdering her just before the curtain falls. The knights continue in ecstasy at the performing of the Grail ceremony by Parsifal – nothing has changed in this ultra-reactionary society.
This shock coup de théâtre – it was apparently declined by Waltraud Meier taking over Kundry earlier this year – comes too late to charge up this efficiently organised but drab-looking production. Musically it’s first-class. If Barenboim actually drags the Act 1 Grail scene a little, his ‘joining up’ of the episodic Act 2 and evocation of the Act 3 Prelude are magical. The casting is pretty much ideal and all deliver superbly. Kampe proves with her gleaming high notes in Act 2 that this role needs a soprano and the bottom of the voice is not lacking. Schager – one of Barenboim’s Proms Siegfrieds – has both weight and lyricism. Pape now colours his text more committedly than in previous recordings of the role; Koch and Tómasson also do very well. Sound is good. The Blu ray filming picks up what colour and dynamic there are in the intentionally unspectacular anti-Romantic images.
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