For an institution in crisis—and the Metropolitan Opera, contending with multiple allegations of sexual abuse of minors against longtime conductor James Levine, as well as a years-long decline in ticket sales, is just that—the Met’s fundamentals are remarkably sound.
Sometimes it’s easy to lose site of the fact that even the worst Met performance routinely features one of the best opera orchestras and choruses in the world, supporting voices that are better trained and arguably more talented than at any time in history. And when it’s a good night? Well.
The short February run of Wagner’s Parsifal makes for very, very good nights indeed. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s rising music director, was absolutely masterful in command of the Met Orchestra. It sounded as good from the pit as the Chicago Symphony, led by conducting legend Riccardo Muti, did onstage at Carnegie Hall that same week. Nézet-Séguin led an inspired performance, bringing out Parsifal’s lush horns while keeping the strings sections taut; managing to keep the dynamically shifting score clear, yet overwhelm the audience with sound instantly when called for. (And it’s often called for.) Parsifal runs for five and a half hours (including intermissions) and is filled with an unusually high number of orchestral interludes, giving the listener ample time to savor the aural feast.
Incoming Met music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Met Orchestra during a rehearsal for Wagner’s ‘Parsifal.’ [Ken Howard / Met Opera]
Those with the best interests of the venerable institution (founded in 1880, two years before the premiere of Parsifal) at heart must be thrilled that Yannick Nézet-Séguin will soon be riding the Acela north from Philadelphia, where he directs the Philadelphia Orchestra, to take over as the Met’s next music director. Just last week it was announced that his arrival, originally scheduled for 2020, had been moved up to this coming fall.
The plot of Parsifal—Wagner’s last opera—can be a bit tricky to describe, but in short: A band of knights is guarding the Holy Grail, from which they draw strength. Gurnemanz is the senior among them and Amfortas is their ruler, just as his father Titurel was before him. Before the action started, a necromancer named Klingsor, who had been rejected from the order, persuaded the wild sorceress Kundry to seduce Amfortas—and then Klingsor stabbed him with the lance he carried, the same lance that had pierced the side of Christ on the cross. The wound won’t heal, and Amfortas is in dreadful pain. (The wound acquires all kinds of nasty significance in light of Wagner’s anti-Semitism; more on that in a moment.) Parsifal, the kind of Aryan übermensch who is so stupid he makes Siegfried look worldly—he needs to be a “pure innocent made wise through pity”—wanders onto the scene, and in Act II, infiltrates Klingsor’s kingdom, is able (mostly) to rebuff Kundry’s advances, destroy Klingsor’s realm, and steal back the lance. Parsifal brings it back to the brothers in Act III, baptizes Kundry, uses the spear to heal Amfortas, and takes over as king and savior of the brothers. It is genuinely unclear if he is supposed to be Christ, but by this point, both in the opera and in his life, Wagner has long since left behind anything remotely resembling orthodox Christian doctrine.
Klaus Florian Vogt in the title role and René Pape as Gurnemanz in Wagner’s ‘Parsifal.’ [Ken Howard / Met Opera]
The singers in this production of Parsifal were equal to what their maestro was summoning from the pit. Many of them are Met regulars. The mellifluous René Pape (who has, for instance, sung over 200 Met performances in 22 roles) dominated the slow-developing but musically sumptuous first act as Gurnemanz, while Peter Mattei (130 performances, 9 roles) haunted the third as the wounded, embittered Amfortas. Relative newcomers Klaus Florian Vogt as Parsifal and Evelyn Herlitzius, making her Met debut as Kundry, showed off the vocal fireworks in the second.
François Girard’s abstract, modern production won’t be for everyone. At times, it can seem like watching The Book of Mormon performed on a desert planet out of Star Wars—men in white shirts and grey slacks praying in a circle on parched ground, while an impossibly huge sun shines behind them. Other scenes are literally drenched in blood.
But putting on Parsifal poses problems for producers everywhere, because Wagner’s anti-Semitism is more virulent and more visible in this opera than any other.
This problem is a sadly familiar one for Wagnerphiles. It’s particularly acute at the annual Bayreuth Festival featuring Wagner’s works, because Hitler had been a frequent guest and Winifred Wagner (the composer’s daughter-in-law) had been an adoring host. Her son Wieland (the composer’s grandson) took over the festival after the war, and struggled with how to revive the festival. As I’ve described elsewhere:
At the Met, Girard has adopted roughly the same approach. We spin through time and space, or watch the showdown between Parsifal and Kundry in an otherworldly (and fairly Freudian) canyon. Anything to distract from the fact that she’s undisguisedly the Wandering Jew, one of the nastiest anti-Semitic medieval folk figures.
Evgeny Nikitin as Klingsor and Evelyn Herlitzius as Kundry in ‘Parsifal.’ [Ken Howard / Met Opera]
Ultimately, the problem, as musicologist Robert Greenberg has pointed out, is that at one and the same time Wagner was at the peak of his musical powers: Parsifal is the most mature flowering of his artistic gifts and a universally acknowledged work of genius. (This, as Greenberg points out, ironically makes it more difficult to excuse the prejudices of the work as the ravings of an old man losing it.) So almost everyone still performs Parsifal—and struggles with the staging. Girard’s production is very (Wieland) Wagnerian: They are both trying to deal with problems created by Richard, and, for better or worse, drawing on ideas latent in his work to do so.
It was, after all, Richard Wagner, not François Girard, who gave Gurnemanz the line, “You see, my son / time here becomes space” as they are about to encounter the Grail—which may have inspired some of the trippier scenes. It was Wagner who put the blasphemous Freudian imagery into the Grail and the Lance, which Girard then plays out in backdrop and stage directions. And the space oddities distract from the anti-Semitism, not to mention the bouts of free associating half-understood Buddhism, Schopenhauer, and quasi-Christian medieval legends.
Why do we keep coming back to Parsifal? Ultimately, the music transcends the man. And what music—especially given what the Met can do with it.
Nicholas M. Gallagher writes on opera, culture, and politics from New York.
