San Francisco Opera: Parsifal

Where do you begin with Parsifal? Where can you end?

I was at the first performance of San Francisco Opera's current revival of Parsifal. As usual after one of the major Wagner works I reeled out afterwards, needing several days to adjust to what we so blithely, amusingly, & thoughtlessly call "reality". That's Parsifal, a work that has run like a leitmotiv through my inner life. I saw the Opera's previous staging, by Nikolaus Lehnhoff, a quarter of a century ago; my major memory is of Kundry at the end, wandering down the railroad tracks that were a prominent feature of the staging (intended as an echo of the Shoah, I think), heading towards . . . a life redeemed from the guilt that oppresses her? a death that relieves her of sin, sorrow, & regret? An ambiguity, among the work's other ambiguities, that can haunt the susceptible. It's the image that unwittingly stuck in my mind: Kundry, the conflicted, the wounded, the mocker & helper, finally free to wander off. That was several years before I started posting here, so I can link to no thoughts from the time. For other encounters with Parsifal, including  the famous Syberberg film & the notorious "bunny" staging at Bayreuth, I offer this early post of mine:

https://reverberatehills.blogspot.com/search?q=swan+dive

I guess I should just start by saying that the current San Francisco production is very fine, very rich, very thoughtful, & would repay repeated visits, but, at the risk of sounding like Mme Verdurin in Proust, I wasn't sure my life could take it. Eun Sun Kim, who conducted, is proving once again that hiring her is one of the best recent moves the Opera has made. Her continuing Verdi / Wagner project is a source of prospective joy & hope. She apparently is the one who insisted that even before the music begins the house lights be turned completely down so we, the audience, can sit for a moment in initiatory darkness. Unfortunately, there were a number of audience members who of course had to have their goddamn cell phones out & on until after the music had started, because we, as a culture, are shallow. That's not a strong enough word, but I'll let it go. The intention of darkness & silence was there, & it was a powerful one, again, to those susceptible.

The staging by Matthew Ozawa is elegant & evocative. It has a ritualistic feel & a fairy-tale look that suit the story & leaves what we're seeing open to ruminative & variant, even contradictory, interpretations. In the first & third acts, the arching Gothic columns turn into tree trunks & back with fluid ease; the colors are dark, with brighter splashes, including a trio of dancers in scarlet (Gabrielle Sprauve, Brett Conway, & Livanna Mailsen, with stately movements by Rena Butler; they added quite a bit to the ritualistic aura of the production). The Flower Maidens in the second act made a particularly lovely scene, in shades of green, teal, pale blue, & yellow, glowing softly against a midnight blue-velvet background; it looked like an illumination by Edmund Dulac.

It was such a striking moment that I regretted the failure in Act 3 to provide the contrasting field of Good Friday flowers; instead we were given the Act 1 set, a bit decayed like the Knighthood of the Grail, but glowing with the redemption offered by Parsifal, who takes up the Grail rituals – actually, in this production, offered by Parsifal with Kundry who stand together, united, both in flowing white robes. I know some who objected to this change to the libretto. I was fine with it. It's a union & liberation of anguished forces, a redemption offered regardless of sexuality. Kundry herself is such a fascinating figure. In Act 1, here, she wears an odd sort of feathered outfit that made her look like a misfit bird. (For some reason, the two young women seated in front of me found this cause for chuckling, which I did not understand. They disappeared during Act 2, but to my surprise they returned for Act 3.) It's an evocation of the natural world that flows into the potential meanings of this staging (a misfit bird, like the swan Parsifal shoots, though perhaps he is the one who is the misfit there). Kundry was performed with intensity by Tanja Ariane Baumgartner.

All the roles, though, were filled with intensity by an excellent cast. Gurnemanz, the garrulous gatekeeper, who, like many such insiders, speak with authority & even compassion but can't quite comprehend those who are outside his organization (hence his dismissal of the awkward & he thinks uncomprehending Parsifal at the end of Act 1) was powerfully presented by Kwangchul Youn. Falk Struckmann was a perversely forceful Klingsor; I'm always surprised by how short this role actually is, given his miasmic presence in the opera. The suffering of Amfortas, he of the unending wound, had searing intensity in the performance of Brian Mulligan. And Brandon Jovanovich as the holy fool . . . this may be the role he was born to play. He has a presence both authoritative & innocent; you can easily see him as both the heedless country bumpkin of Act 1, the swan-shooter, & Act 2's troubled, searching, ultimately compassionate man who rejects Kundry's sexual advances but still offers her a loving understanding, & Act 3's firmly focused & mature Knight. He sings with purity & piercing empathy.

Parsifal is an interesting revision of an earlier Wagner hero, sort of a Siegfried 2.0. It was Bernard Shaw who pointed out the shift in Wagner, from a hero who was a dragon-slayer to one who is rebuked for, & regrets, shooting a swan in flight. There is the same alienation from conventional society, the same pang in him because of that alienation, his ignorance of his background &, especially, of his mother, that source of life & knowledge. Parsifal, though, is without what often strikes us as Siegfried's thoughtless arrogance, those Ubermenschy qualities that ring unpleasantly in 21st century ears. Parsifal listens. He considers. He is open to others, which is how he frees both them & himself.

Personally, I've always thought of Parsifal as one of the great examinations of the odd inextricable mixture of the spiritual & the sexual. I think Amfortas's wound, the unending, unhealable wound, is sexual desire. That's why the crucial moment in the opera is when Parsifal rejects Kundry sexually but still is open to her with compassion, as a suffering being. (This is the moment, in Syberberg's film, when the young man playing Parsifal is replaced by a young woman: I see his intention, despite the dubious gender assumptions.) Klingsor, like the Church Father / heretic Origen, castrated himself (allegedly, in Origen's case); that's one way of trying to avoid the struggle of fitting sexuality into life, but ultimately not a satisfying one (I think of Cleopatra's conversation with the eunuch, in Shakespeare's play, where he confesses that desire remains: "I think of what Venus did with Mars"). Wagner was clearly a person for whom eroticism was a guiding  force (think of Tristan!); his music, with its sinuous, insinuating, opiate lines, argues for the inescapability of our urges. Did he solve it, in Parsifal? Did he dissolve the erotic in the religious & the ritualistically religious into the redemptive, in a five-hour version of Bernini's Ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Avila, freeing us from our trammeling flesh? Is there even a possible answer to this question?

Perhaps the plenitude of Parsifal is to prompt questions, & offer nothing but suggestions of possible answers.