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Wagner Society in NSW Inc
It is so easy to feel distinctly outside Time arriving in Bayreuth, two air flights and three train trips after leaving Australia. The centre of town is such a beautiful time-warp of cobble stones, of window boxes and gardens of jasmine and lavender petunias, where ‘real time’ begins at 4pm when that day’s opera begins. Walking up the path through the flower gardens to the Festspielhaus, with the dappled sunlight glinting through leaves just taking on their golden autumn shades, one could almost believe one was crossing that mythical ‘rainbow bridge’ on the way to Valhalla! There is such a sense of excitement, an excitement captured by the celebratory fanfare of the brass from the balcony of the hall. This is to be Stefan Herheim’s new production of Parsifal (an opera which we’ve seen previously only on video). In this recreation of the mythical tale of the Kingdom of the Grail, and its dispirited knights, threatened by the magical powers of the envious magician, Klingsor, and his irresistible seductress, Kundry, and in desperate need of redemption by an ‘innocent fool’, are we going to be challenged, delighted, or confounded - as many were by Katharina Wagner’s production of Die Meistersinger the previous evening? These comments provide no musicologist’s analysis or professional critique of the opera. They are a recollection of the images and music so excitingly presented that they still swirl through the mind. Audience members become aware immediately that we are not just here to celebrate but to be challenged, when the curtain opens on the first notes of the Prelude. From the very beginning, and throughout the Prelude, in what becomes a hallmark of Herheim’s production, a series of unexpected images is presented to an increasingly enthralled audience. The establishing scene, unanticipated and initially puzzling, is not the forest and castle of Montsalvat, home of the Guardians of the Grail, not a gathering of robed knights and squires. The curtains have opened to reveal, in the foreground, a beautifully furnished room, the central focus of which is an enormous bed. Household staff, (a butler whom we recognize as the singer who will become Gurnemanz, and a maid who will become Kundry!), numerous officials and a doctor, all wearing large, grey wings, flutter anxiously around a sick room. On her deathbed lies a flaming-haired Herzeleide, (unnervingly resembling both the ferocious, red-haired female warrior, Germania, in von Kaulbach’s huge painting above the mantel of the room, and a determinedly seductive Kundry). She opens her arms ardently, only to be rejected by her young son, Parsifal, self-absorbed with a wooden horse and a bow and arrow. He runs out into a garden, and the audience becomes aware of a magnificent home set in beautiful grounds among trees. The house is identifiably Wahnfried, Wagner’s own place of ‘Freedom from folly and delusion’. (How ironic the naming of that home will become over the course of the opera.) Reflective surfaces and mirrors expand this environment so that there is a destabilising notion of illusion and reflection mixed with reality. The focus then slips back to the bed (a multi-function site throughout the production, alternating as Herzeleide’s deathbed, the scene of Kundry’s seduction of Amfortas and the attempted seduction of Parsifal, and a sign of the collapse of the never-ending cycle of death and rebirth with its own destruction in Act III). We also slip back in time to the very bloody birth of Herzeleide’s child, Parsifal, hovered over by both religious and state dignitaries, who triumphantly hold him aloft as a clear hope, almost a trophy. A celebration of the fashionable bourgeoisie begins to take place among the trees in the garden of Wahnfried, all elegant participants, including children, wearing enormous soft grey wings. Questions immediately begin to demand answers. Are these beautiful people angels; good angels or dark birds of evil, exemplified by the eagles on the flag of the German Empire? How do we interpret them? How do they picture themselves: as part of some mythical race of winged heroes? Are there parallels between the Knights of the Grail of this opera, and these people and their beliefs? Is this smart set the embodiment of some sort of movement, some spirit of nationalism which centres on Wahnfried as their Grail Temple? Are they, too, like the Grail Knights, hoping for a redeemer, someone who will restore Germany’s sense of self, its national pride - a modern Parsifal? Is this to be an allegorical interpretation in which the two communities are examined in the light of each other – played off against each other? Will they perhaps share a Redeemer: or could there also be a Dark Redeemer? Perhaps to assist in the unravelling of these questions, another focus exists on the stage, a pond and fountain in Wahnfried’s garden, and, in the extreme forefront, the ivy-covered tomb of Wagner, decorated with flowers of remembrance. Various participants come to converse with the tomb and build strange little mud brick walls (in the manner of Rene Magritte’s painting The Cultural Conversation which has appeared on a screen [you can see an image at www.abcgallery.com/M/magritte/magritte58.html - Editor].) Why do they come? Is this to be a ‘conversation’ about culture and nationalism, or is this just a brick wall where the conversation is closed? During the opera it is both. Herheim then contrasts these Prelude images of this positive, self-satisfied, confident, ambitious society with the focus of the opera-proper, the decayed and dispirited world of the Grail Knights, who had been entrusted with the guardianship of the holy relics of the Grail and the Spear as symbols of the strength of their faith. Overconfident of his ability to defeat Klingsor, Amfortas, the community’s new leader, proved unable to resist the sexual charms of Kundry. Now, bloodied by the Spear and crippled, Amfortas embodies the suffering and guilt brought to the community by the loss of its sacred relic and his own sacred purity. The circumference of his head has been transformed into a crown of thorns, with savage black protuberances emerging from his skull. Into this suffering, defeated world the bumptious, artless Parsifal arrives, still bearing the bow and arrow of his childhood, and wearing his bourgeois sailor suit. On a swift learning curve, he is rapidly confronted with the consequences of brute force by a now transformed Gurnemanz. As the stage transforms splendidly into the Temple of Montsalvat, an uncomprehending Parsifal watches the Grail Knights yearning for the solace of the Eucharist, demanding their ‘love feast’. Then startlingly, in a perversion of its intention, they are subsequently refreshed by its ‘fiery blood of life’ , and transformed both by archival film footage projected onto the internal walls of a newly-appeared Wahnfried, and on the stage itself, into aggressive, battle-ready German warriors, imbued with nationalistic fervour. Black-booted, grey-uniformed, armed, carrying their eagle-emblazoned ensign, they storm from the stage. Even during this depiction of the period of the Empire of Wilhelm II, one is reminded of Hitler and his cult of Pure Blood. The two communities echo each other: Europe’s collapse into World War I mirroring the collapse of the community of the Grail. Somewhat in the role of Parsifal, the innocent fool, the audience too, at the end of that first act, hardly knows what it has seen. It has been so stunning. The first Act received rapturous applause and conversation was at fever-pitch even before the audience left the theatre. Clearly, Herheim brings to the audience a multi-layered interpretation of Parsifal, with ambiguous visual imagery, a slippage of time between past and present, a slippage of characters – one into another - and interwoven stories: of the infant, Parsifal, growing from child to Redeemer of the community of the Grail; of the history of Germany from the late nineteenth century Empire until the reconstruction of the 1950s; and of the history of the Bayreuth Festival itself, and its susceptibility for some responsibility as a central focus of nationalism, politics and culture. Is the production challenging? Definitely. Is it ‘appropriate’? Wagner’s brief was to challenge, to incorporate theatrical innovations. His concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, that ‘total work of art’, is exploited to the full by Herheim not only in his use of paintings of Wagner’s day for example, for background, popular mood and costume; but actual paintings in the set reveal the prevailing fervour of a range of historical times; and both archival and new film convey the passionate nationalism of the soldiers of the German Empire, the Nazi era, and the despondency of post-WWII destruction. And all is held in place by the music. The music of Parsifal could never take a back seat, and conductor Daniele Gatti, weaves a mesmerising spell, complementing and almost demanding the alluring imagery. The exemplary voices are never overwhelmed by the stunning imagery, and the characters appear totally comfortable in their challenging portrayals. This is not to say that all the interpretations work perfectly. In Act II, the vengeful Klingsor’s magic garden is transformed into a semi-circular military hospital ward which might well have been based on the imagery of the German artist, Otto Dix, the anti-war ‘degenerate’ artist most loathed by Hitler. Disfigured and deluded modern-day Grail Knights, victims of the seductive propaganda of heroic national fervour, lie battered and deformed, all needs, sexual and emotional, tended to by a ward full of compliant nurses and feathered cabaret dancers in the roles of ‘flower maidens’. It is a Frankenstein image that Dix might well have admired. However, the overlord is a raunchy Klingsor, who emerges from an enormous mirror over the mantel in Wahnfried as Frank-N-Furter of the ‘Rocky Horror Show’. Black-winged, platinum blond-wigged, long limbs clad in black mesh stockings, patent stilettos, satin dinner jacket worn over satin shorts and the most alluring of red lips – Klingsor presents a stunning image. It is wonderful theatre. However, it is a disappointingly misguided interpretation of this vital, vindictive, vengeful manipulator. This is not what Klingsor is about. Klingsor is no seductive Gay icon, revelling in the Mardi Gras or the Cabaret. (His seductions are performed on his behalf by the long-suffering Kundry, as punishment.) Desperate to become a holy Knight of the Grail, he had castrated himself in a desperate attempt to control his wayward sexuality. This bloody, desperate act of self-loathing saw him expelled from the Grail community upon which he then determined to wreak revenge by creating a garden of seduction in which the Knights would fall victim to their carnal passions. To portray Klingsor as the raving transvestite transsexual from Transylvania is to use a tired and inappropriate cliché. By contrast, Kundry as seductress is brilliantly interpreted. Appearing initially on the balcony of Wahnfried, encircled within the heraldic medallion of the Grail Community where the white swan formerly appeared, she is transformed into the sex goddess Marlene Dietrich in her role as the Blue Angel. When she fails to seduce Parsifal in this persona, seemingly by sleight of hand she metamorphoses into the red-haired Herzeleide, then Germania, then Kundry herself in increasingly desperate attempts to seduce, to persuade, to gain pity. The physically slight Mihoko Fujimura as Kundry seemed almost to change her form according to her various methods of seduction. Her sometimes brittle voice soared and plunged, cajoled and cursed. She was at her decadent best. One wonders how Parsifal could have denied her compassion – except for the awful epiphany he undergoes, the pain of Amfortas’ torture of desire. Parsifal’s resolution to reject her is reinforced by what appeared to be images of a uniformed Amfortas in the dock, perhaps at a war trial, blazoned on a back screen. Was he being tried as unworthy guardian of the Grail or as unworthy upholder of a perverted German spirit? It was the final confrontation between Klingsor and Parsifal which polarised many. As the Spear thrown by Klingsor was wielded by Parsifal in the shape of the cross, there was an instantaneous collapse of Klingsor’s domain, and an immediate, synchronous explosion all over the stage of Third Reich banners of red complete with swastikas. The stage was overrun by goose-stepping, jack-booted, leather-clad storm troopers, as a golden boy from the Hitler Youth emerged from the centre of the stage pond. Some enthusiastic booing erupted. Was it caused by embarrassment, or the shock of recognition? ‘Too gimmicky’, some were heard to say. (Perhaps they had not read the programme notes in which it was outlined how Hitler had submitted set designs for the new 1934 production of Parsifal, or that Radio Munich had been using the Grail motif as its call sign since May, 1933!) Act III seemed not only slow in tempo: it seemed the most problematically realised. The first notes of the Prelude revealed not the expected spring landscape in the domain of the Grail, but a bombed Wahnfried, post World War II. Magritte’s Cultural Conversation was again displayed, this time photographically on the back screen, immediately followed by a depiction of Wagner’s death mask. Clearly we were to confront Wagner’s War responsibility, should there be one. Were his works subject to use or abuse, or not; did the Festspielhaus provide a focus of reverence for the members of the Cult of Blood? With the most deliberate slowness, Parsifal appears to Gurnemanz and Kundry as the Knight in full regalia, showing all the marks of the trials to which Kundry’s curse has condemned him. He places his armour in the centre of Wahnfried’s pool which literally swallows it. The glowing Grail spear is plucked from the centre of the destroyed fountain, and fresh water flows as new life. The Mary Magdalene washing-of-the-feet scene and Kundry’s blessing by Parsifal at least signify that her perpetual swirling in turmoil round the earth in birth after rebirth, seeking redemption for her lack of compassion is finally over. However, it all seems so anti-climactic. Then a second proscenium arch is rolled onto the stage, within the main stage, its footlights thrown back onto the audience. A dread thought begins to form: please don’t let this become an ‘All the world’s a stage and, as the audience, you’ve become the players’- kind of production! This awful thought is confirmed when a huge circular mirror with grid lines hinges into place. The audience is to be confronted by its own guilt! The Transformation music moves the scene not to the domain of the Grail, but to the serried seating of the Bundestag, the German parliament, where the Grail Knights are transformed into elected, be-suited representatives. The coffin of Titurel, draped in the flag of the Empire, is placed before a dock in which appears Amfortas, lustily accused by aggressive contemporary ‘Knights’ of being unworthy guardian of the Grail. There is to be no peaceful reconciliation here. The appearance of the white-robed Parsifal compassionately healing the pleading Amfortas with glowing red spear brings peace to a stormy scene. The white dove of the United Nations takes the place of the dove of the Holy Spirit above the stage. A transformed Gurnemanz representing the Common Man, and poor Kundry as the Common Woman (transformed yet again in spite of being freed from her eternal cycle of death and rebirth), appear with shared boy-child. This brings what has been until now a most wonderful performance of Parsifal to a disappointingly saccharine finale. An overjoyed audience enthusiastically applauds itself in a huge mirror. What an extraordinary conclusion to a fabulous evening! Conductor - Daniele Gatti; Production - Stefan Herheim; Stage design - Heike Scheele; Costumes - Gesine Völlm; Dramaturgy -;Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach; Chorus director - Eberhard Friedrich; Amfortas - Detlef Roth; Titurel - Diógenes Randes; Gurnemanz - Kwangchul Youn; Parsifal - Christopher Ventris; Klingsor - Thomas Jesatko; Kundry - Mihoko Fujimura.
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