It seems there's more than one Russian singer with an unexplained tattoo.
Eagle eyed reviewers have spotted that Anna Netrebko is currently sporting a colourful piece of body art - on her neck.
They've speculated it's part of the punky persona she's created for Salzburg's new La bohème, in which she plays a thoroughly modern Mimi. Because it couldn't be a gesture of solidarity with her former classmate Evgeny Nikitin - could it?
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The Met joins the Bavarian State Opera in backing Evgeny Nikitin over his 'Nazi tattoo' controversy, Peter Gelb has told the New York Times.
In a phone interview with the paper, arranged by the Met, Nikitin clarified the incomplete and sometimes contradictory statements which have been made by him or on his behalf since the scandal broke. He said he had given Bayreuth Festival management "carte blanche to say what they wanted to preserve the festival".
Nikitin explained that the swastika-like symbol seen on his chest in old photos was just an incomplete eight-pointed star of his own design which had to be stopped part way through when he began to bleed, and supplied the paper with the sketch above.
He said he had never had any connection to a neo-Nazi or fascist movement.
"“It would be really a shame if an artist’s career was destroyed over something that isn’t true,” Mr. Gelb said."
Nikitin remains booked to appear in next year's Met Parsifal.
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The announcement earlier today that radical artist Jonathan Meese will direct Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival in 2016 means that the Nikitin affair takes another turn.
After Nikitin's recent sacking for the crime of having once borne a swastika-like tattoo, it may come as a surprise to learn that Meese, pictured above, is notorious for his use of swastikas and other Nazi imagery in his work, some of which is shown below.
Continue reading "New Bayreuth director is a swastika fan" »
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On the day the Bayreuth Festival opens, the Wagner sisters have provided the customary annual glimpse at future Festival plans. The sisters' contract provisionally expires in 2015, but with operatic schedules being what they are, new productions up to 2020 are already in the planning stage.
2016's new Parsifal will be directed by artist Jonathan Meese. Meese designed the sets for Wolfgang Rihm's Salzburg Festival Dionysus but otherwise has little stage experience. Andris Nelsons will conduct, with Klaus Florian Vogt as Parsifal, Petra Lang as Kundry and Georg Zeppenfeld as Gurnemanz.
2017 will see a new Meistersinger and 2018 a Lohengrin, conducted by Christian Thielemann. 2019 is Tannhäuser time and in 2020 there will be a new Ring.
They also revealed the Bayreuth door is not entirely closed to Evgeny Nikitin pending a satisfactory explanation from the singer for his tattoos.
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One of the many opera houses Evgeny Nikitin's career has taken him to is Munich. And the Intendant of the Bavarian State Opera, Nikolaus Bachler, can see no reason to cancel any of the singer's future appearances there, he tells the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Instead Bachler, whose house runs one of the most effective press/PR operations in the business, accuses the Wagner family of hypocrisy and poor incident management.
"I view the 'Nikitin Affair' primarily as a problem with Bayreuth and the Wagner family, not with the singer," he said. "I find it dishonest that the folly of a 16-year-old rock singer who has long since repented and tried to undo the problem should be punished by the Wagner family. People often point the finger at someone else when they have a problem with their own history."
Pointing out that Nikitin had apologised and shown remorse, Bachler added: "I have never heard the Wagner family regret anything in the last 50 years ."
Bachler criticized not only Nikitin's departure, but also the manner in which he left Bayreuth: "A joint press conference would have been more appropriate than making Nikitin withdraw and damaging his reputation. " He described the affair as an ugly tale that demonstrates "how the past is still present."
Another major German newspaper, FAZ, has run an editorial piece along similar lines.
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The publicity storm surrounding Evgeny Nikitin and his swastika tattoo couldn't have come at a more embarrassing time for the Bayreuth Festival.
For today sees the opening of 'Silenced Voices' in Bayreuth. Subtitled 'The Bayreuth Festival and the Jews 1876-1945', the acclaimed touring exhibition investigates anti-Semitism in the German opera world, and is tailored to each place it visits. These include Dresden, where I saw it last year.
The wordy exhibits (as shown in the photo above) cover anti-Semitic abuses of the festival (which predate the Third Reich), the defamation and exclusion of Jewish artists, and biographies of 44 artists expelled or murdered as a result.
With the Wahnfried Museum currently closed for renovation, the exhibition is likely to prove a popular draw for Festival visitors. Perhaps even more so now.
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It seems not everyone cares for Evgeny Nikitin's tattoos, as pictured in the post below.
Just five days before the premiere of the new Bayreuth production of Der Fliegende Holländer, Festival management have sent him home after taking exception to an alleged Nazi symbol on his upper body.
Looking at a recent photo of Nikitin (above), it's hard to understand what the problem is.
But an older shot, taken during his days as a heavy metal drummer (below) gives a clue. Beneath what is now a colourful coat-of-arms lies something that looks like a swastika - in other words, an embarrassing mistake that he's now covered up.
Whether this is indicative of Nikitin's current or past political opinions is something only he himself could confirm.
But his tattoos have never been any secret. He has sung in all the world's major houses, including Covent Garden and the Met, and nobody to my knowledge has ever complained about them or suggested that he holds any unsavoury beliefs. Of course the tattoos are generally covered up for aesthetic reasons, but in some productions he has openly flaunted them. Thousands of people have seen them. No-one has said anything.
Bayreuth's sudden decision is bizarre. Not just because it appears to relate to a problem that no longer exists. And not just because the evidence was available long before they booked him. It's bizarre because Bayreuth have actively centred pre-production marketing around ....Nikitin's tattoos.
You can see the TV interview which allegedly alerted Festival management to the problem here. A brief section (lifted from this old video) shows the younger Nikitin barechested at the drums.
Nikitin's parting shot: "I did not realise how much irritation and injury such signs and symbols could cause, particularly at the Bayreuth Festival. I had these tattoos done when I was young. It was one of the great mistakes of my life and I wish I had never done it."
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Bayreuth's new Russian Dutchman Evgeny Nikitin nobly flashed his tats for today's Bild in the interests of PR.
To the relief of his choirmaster father, Nikitin's heavy metal days are over. But the ex-drummer revealed that he wouldn't say no to another tattoo or two.
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Lohengrin - National Theatre Munich, 25 July 2010
There were two Lohengrins in Bavaria on Sunday. I was at the other one. I had time to take in only the first act of the new Bayreuth one (sounded pretty good) on the radio before setting off for another look at Munich's version. I didn't care much for the production itself last year. Richard Jones's silly lego house and class conflict twaddle was if anything even more irritating second time round. It can't help the performers when the audience are tittering away at inappropriate moments, but when Lohengrin arrives with a nodding swan tucked under his arm, or kills Telramund with a wave of his arm, what can you expect?
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Götterdämmerung - Mariinsky Opera - Royal Opera House, 1 August 2009
And so the Mariinsky Opera's Ring Cycle draws to an end with - a mouldy angel? a novelty d1ldo? a foetus doing pressups? After 16 hours I shared the don't know don't care mood of most of the cast. The staging, by now familiar, consisted of adjusting the pewp-thingies into various inexplicable positions beneath random disco lights. At least the Tarnhelm had mutated from the first night's hankie into a proper helmet.
The only scene that worked, theatrically speaking, was the first part of Act 1, and even that was entirely down to a couple of splendid performances.
Mikhail Petrenko was simply the best Hagen I have ever seen. It's debatable whether he has the right voice for the part - firm and commanding, it's nevertheless on the light side, more golden syrup than black molasses. But he brings a devious, manipulative intelligence to the role. It's a fresh interpretation that nests with the sinuous music in a way that makes the traditional low-browed thug approach look not only outdated, but wrong. And he does it all in strapless ballgown and baldy wig. Just brilliant.
Evgeny Nikitin's cretinous, cowardly Gunther was equally compelling. He was far more animated than in his earlier appearances as Wotan, and the part seems to suit him better vocally at the moment too. The Egyptian temple set and costuming worked well, and with these two sparring together, for the first time in four days I felt I was watching a properly-rehearsed professional production. And it doesn't hurt that both sung their parts accurately and musically, without resort to bluster. Elena Nebera's Gutrune was anonymous in comparison, though mostly cleanly sung.
The Siegfried du jour wasn't a patch on the previous evening's. Debatably the better singer of the two, Viktor Lutsyuk's voice has a nasal edge that penetrates any number of orchestral decibels. But his vibrato made it hard to tell what note he was aiming at, and he often resorted to shouting. Without the acting chops or gung-ho charisma of Leonid Zakhozhaev, it was hard to warm to him. In his favour, he did die more credibly than anyone else in the whole cycle.
Olga Savova made a better Waltraute than Walküre Brünnhilde, though I wasn't sure why she sported the same shaggy poncho Wotan had worn the previous night.
Larisa Gogolevskaya seemed at first as if she would prove the best of the three Brünnhildes in the cycle. Her Mrs Tiggywinkle proportions clad in a shapeless black caftan instead of the S&M costume sported by her colleagues, and without much in the way of vocal or physical expressivity, she nevertheless held a firm, steady line in an appealing lyric soprano. Until the end of the first act, that is, when her voice suddenly hoarsened. She struggled through, but it seemed as if she was about to lose it completely. Whatever she took in the interval helped her through to the end of the opera, though she completely missed her third act cue, and limped through the most uneventful immolation imaginable - no horse, no flames, no Rhine, and oddly, no Hagen either.
Gergiev hardly went out in a blaze of glory either. The prologue and first act were promising, but he began the second at a funereal pace that never picked up. There were some nice details here and there, but it was hard to engage with an interpretation so stop-start. I guess economics dictate the touring of operas that sell rather than operas he has a passion and flair for (meaning the Russian repertoire) but I can't help thinking a bit more rehearsal might have rescued this from the realms of the slapdash.
Nikolai Putilin as Alberich reviews the production:
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Siegfried - Mariinsky Opera - Royal Opera House, 31 July 2009
Perhaps I'm just suffering from PILES (Pap Induced Lowered Expectation Syndrome). But this Siegfried seemed not just the best of the Mariinsky's Ring bunch so far, but a creditable performance by any standards.
In most productions, the tenor in the title-role is a bit of a liability, but in this one he was the heroic saviour. Leonid Zakhozhaev wouldn't win any singing contests, but he hit the right notes often enough to convince he hasn't earned his place solely on his acting skillz - which were on a completely different plane to anyone else on stage. From grimaces to bum-wiggles, his performance was packed with little physical details that helped distract from the godawful scenery.
His solid, grainy lyric tenor is a size too small for the role, so he constantly pushed it, with varying unattractive effects on pitch and timbre. But his stamina was unflagging. Amazingly, he sang the last act more cleanly and brightly than the first, all while bounding about like Tigger.
His complete commitment and eagerness to reach out and please the audience transcended any vocal limitations. Most importantly, he didn't judge the character. He played Siegfried as an irritating brat, without ever being irritating himself - the hardest trick of all.
The classiest singing came from Evgeny Nikitin. Unlike most Wotans, he actually sang the part rather than bellowing it, and with nuance and structural appreciation too. Sadly his voice tired towards the end, and he'd clearly had next to zero direction or rehearsal.
Neither Nikolai Putilin as Alberich or Vasily Gorshkov as Mime offered quite such lovely singing, and their ghastly costumes limited them to gleeful-Hobbit characterisations. But both, Gorshkov in particular, milked every word for expressive effect - and proved that a wooden sword to the armpit (where was the director when they planned that one?) can deliver a mortal blow.
Brünnhilde proved a bit much for Olga Sergeyeva, with pitch and vibrato issues as her voice rose, and Anastasia Kalagina couldn't quite find the delicacy (or the very highest notes) as the Woodbird. But then she was hampered by a ridiculous doily costume extending up to cover her head.
The orchestra played well (if not entirely fluff-free) and Gergiev was able to sustain the momentum he found in the preludes. The policy of switching some players between acts seems to help - the orchestra is showing a stamina to equal Leonid Zakhozhaev's.
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Continue reading "Siegfried - Mariinsky Ring takes a turn for the better" »
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On Radio 3's In Tune programme last night, Valery Gergiev defended his Mariinsky Ring staging - according to him the cycle is "not rational" and "not German". Has he slowed down for long enough to actually study it, I wonder?
There's also a brief chat with the very earnest Evgeny Nikitin - who explains why singing Wagner should be like singing Mozart, and why tattoos are a smart career move.
Listen for the next few days here (ff to 1:13).
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Das Rheingold - Mariinsky Opera - Royal Opera House, 29 July 2009
Infantile, cartoonish, theatrically inept - unfortunately it looks as if this Ring Cycle is going to tick all the boxes that its past critics claim for it, despite a supposed 'restaging' earlier this year.
Stark lighting exposes the shortcomings of the bare set, semaphore substitutes for acting, and the 'difficult' scenes - fights and physical transformations and so on - are bereft of imagination or credibility. (The Tarnhelm is a big hankie, and it's kind of downhill from there.) The less said about the pewpie dolls hanging from the ceiling, the better. Oh, and the stagehands chatted - loudly - during the music. Can you believe it?
On the upside (yes there is one), while it may be risible, it's not irritating and it doesn't get in the way. I'd just like to have had some sort of intellect or perspective applied, that's all.
And the casting isn't bad. Evgeny Nikitin (Wotan), Evgeny Ulanov (Donner), Zhanna Dombrovskaya (Freia) and Vadim Kravets (Fasolt) can really sing, even if the (lack of) direction means they flounder physically. Larissa Diadkova brought her inimitably starry presence and a powerful set of lungs to Fricka, and Nikolai Putilin's tremendous range of expression made it easier to overlook the shoutiness of his Alberich. Andrei Popov (Mime) proved himself the only convincing actor of the bunch and Zhanna Dombrovskaya (Woglinde) was the best of the Rhinemaidens.
The Mariinsky Orchestra played well, though Gergiev didn't seem to have any particular goal in sight other than getting through it. Das Rheingold, with all its various 'effects', is the part of the Ring you'd expect him to excel at. But the anvil chorus slipped by, and Donner's thunderstorm lacked climactic impact. All rather monochromatic. Part of the problem was an understaffed and underequipped percussion section - it's the bit of the orchestra you don't tend to notice unless it's not quite right. Doesn't bode well for the rest of the cycle.
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Lohengrin - Bayerische Staatsoper, Nationaltheater, Munich, 15 July 2009 When I listened to last week's premiere of this new production on the radio, I wasn't that surprised to hear booing from the audience - it's customary here for any even slightly revisionist new Wagner production, whatever the musical quality. The boos were few this time round - but perhaps that was just because director Richard Jones had wisely scarpered. On the grounds that building a state is like building a house (and slotting as neatly as an Ikea shelf into the theme for this year's opera festival, 'Under Construction'), he sets it around Elsa constructing her dream home. Not a bad idea, but it's his only one, and it doesn't stretch very far, forcing him into some absurd corners. What's more, the execution doesn't always match up to the concept, and it's often hard to work out just what is going on, let alone how to interpret it. As is usual with radical rethinks, the text and the action part company frequently - that much is expected. But the musical cues - which are detailed and specific - are glossed over too. The disconnect between what is heard and what is seen is less forgivable. Characters are turned upside down. Elsa is no longer an innocent girl, but a capable Rosie the Riveter in plaits and dungarees - and she's not afraid to grout the bricks herself. Lohengrin is a scruffy anti-hero, who strolls in with a (very realistic) swan tucked under his arm, to general disinterest. He wiggles his sword half-heartedly, but fells Telramund with magic jazz hands - thus confirming Ortrud's suspicions that wizardry is afoot. Telramund is a monodimensional bully, there's nothing regal about the King, and even the Herald is shoved to one side on an umpire's chair, while his pronouncements are relayed on tiny screens above the stage (Big Brother? - don't ask me). The chorus, dressed in a mixture of schoolwear, Bertie Wooster blazers and something daringly close to the local Munich police uniform, mooch around irrelevantly. They might as well have sung off stage. Everybody looks as if they'd rather be somewhere else - which I assume must be a directorial imperative rather than universal unprofessionalism. If Richard Jones had set out to get up everyone's noses (a possibility I don't discount) he could hardly have done better. Jonas Kaufmann made an intriguing comment in a recent German interview (translated here) that "We already took several approaches, which however failed for various reasons". Was he talking about German productions in general or this particular one? Here's how it opens. As the Vorspiel is played (and I wonder what conductor Kent Nagano thought of that) Elsa sketches her house plan with arthritic slowness. Behind is a gantry which will later accomodate the chorus; to the right is the Herald's chair:
Continue reading "Lohengrin in Munich - with Jonas Kaufmann" »
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LSO / Gergiev - Barbican, 12 March 2009
If Gergiev isn't truly fired up by what he's conducting, it's painfully obvious. The centrepiece of this LSO concert was the whole third act of Parsifal - which I would guess on this showing doesn't do it for him. OK, it was efficiently played by the LSO. But a few neatly-crafted peaks aside, it was as tepid as a cup of Barbican tea. And a concert performance really needs drama, in some ways more than a staged version would. Wagner doesn't hand much out on a plate with Parsifal. The themes of suffering and redemption are buried deep beneath the surface. Gergiev fared so much better with the more overt and flamboyant expression of the Russian operas he presented here just a few weeks ago. With Barenboim's magnificent Berlin reading fresh in my memory, Gergiev's Parsifal paled in comparison.
There was one unmistakeable high point, and that was the brief contribution of Evgeny Nikitin as Amfortas. He has that wan, shagged-out Russian look - too many late nights, not enough fresh vegetables - and he looks as if he couldn't care less. But when he opened his mouth he was transformed, as if he'd been sitting there quietly simmering for an hour and was ready to boil over. Amfortas's anguish and guilt erupted in Nikitin's intense, yet finely-controlled performance.
Robert Holl, in the unfortunate position of replacing Rene Pape at short notice, gave a creditable account of Gurnemanz, earnest and human, though with a slight touch of the routine about it.
The Parsifal, Sergey Semishkur was a weak link. There's an interesting if not especially beautiful voice there - steel cored and bright - but it's not reined in effectively, and vibrato and dynamics were all over the place.
Some compensation for the disappointments was provided by the first half's Dutilleux cello concerto, Tout un monde lointain. LSO principal cellist Tim Hugh soloed with care and precision, matched by some exquisitely delicate playing from the orchestra.
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Is February over already?
Opera
At the Royal Opera House, I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca opens on 2 March. Kill for tickets.
Next up is a new double bill of Dido and Aeneas with Acis and Galatea opening 31 March. Choreographer Wayne McGregor, whose work demonstrates little musical sensibility, is the odd choice of director. Sarah Connolly, Lucy Crowe, Iestyn Davies and Danielle de Niese make their ROH debuts.
On 13 March there's a one-off performance of Verdi's Messa da Requiem . Antonio Pappano conducts Barbara Frittoli, Olga Borodina, Piotr Beczala and Ildar Abdrazakov. Sold out, but check for returns towards the date.
At ENO, there's a revival of one of their better recent productions, David Alden's Jenùfa with Amanda Roocroft.
English Touring Opera bring the Magic Flute to Hackney Empire on 12 and 14 March, with Katya Kabanova on 13 March. For authentic 'period' atmosphere (and a bargain), buy the cheapest balcony seats, then stand at the back with your beer (the balcony bar is open throughout the show).
On 2, 4 and 9 March the Royal Academy of Music present Haydn's charming La fedeltà premiata in their bijou but perfectly-formed theatre.
Jiří Bělohlávek and the BBCSO attempt an overdue rehabilitation of Martinů's Julietta in concert at the Barbican on 27 March, with Magdalena Kozena in the title role.
And on 28 March David Parry and the LPO bring Rossini's Ermione to the Royal Festival Hall.
Not opera
At the Barbican, 7 March is the BBCSO's Xenakis day. On 11 March Thomas Quasthoff presents a Bach and Handel programme. On 12 March it's the turn of Valery Gergiev and the LSO, who perform Parsifal's Act 3 with the awesome Rene Pape and the remarkably-tattooed Evgeny Nikitin. Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw visit on 14 and 15 March with Beethoven's 7th and Bruckner's 9th.
The Royal Festival Hall hosts Maurizio Pollini on 4 March and the not-so-retired-after-all Alfred Brendel on 7 March (it's a charity concert for Comic Relief and he's credited as 'poet'). On 12 March at 6pm there's a FREE concert of Oliver Knussen's vocal works, conducted by the composer himself, with Claire Booth. A few tickets remain for countertenor Philippe Jaroussky in the Purcell Room on 23 March. On 29 March Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra are joined by Anja Harteros in a programme that includes the Eroica Symphony and Strauss's Four Last Songs.
At Wigmore Hall, Mark Padmore visits on 12 March with a Brahms and Schubert programme. Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk appear on 26 March. Check the website for the inevitable returns.
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The Demon - Mariinsky Theatre / Gergiev - Barbican, 31 January 2009
The second concert in the Mariinsky Theatre's Barbican mini-series maintained the standards of the first.
Anton Rubinstein's The Demon is nothing like as well-known or as frequently performed as his pupil Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades. There are reasons for that. It's dramatic - but the story takes a while to get going. It's melodic - but the tunes are not 'quite' memorable. It has moments of startling innovation - but they're over all too soon don't add up to a truly inventive whole in the way that even the least of Tchaikovsky's operas do.
OK, these are pretty fundamental flaws. But Gergiev and the Mariinsky did their utmost to sweep them aside, in a performance of such glorious, sizzling vitality you could forget it was just a row of guys singing in front of an orchestra.
Major credit must go to Evgeny Nikitin in the title role, a truly diabolical demon.
Ladies and gentlemen, he has a tattoo on his *head*.
Yes, a tattooed head - suck on that, Rene Pape. Look!...
Not to mention tattoos on his knuckle-dustered hands and who knows how many more hidden up his long sleeves. A truly great actor, who 'is' rather than 'does', he made a fearsome and compelling stage presence, tinged with menace even in the sweetest of his serenades to Tamara, the beautiful human he has fallen for.
And the voice! As if any further qualifications were necessary, he possesses a luxurious velvety bass-baritone that seems to emerge as nature intended, unfettered by the technical proficiency that shapes and colours every note.
Irma Gigolaty, trussed and bustled like an Victorian governess, and the sturdy tenor Evgeny Akimov played Tamara and her fiance. Neither were quite perfectly cast - she sounded as if she'd rather be singing Vissi d'arte, he Questa O Quella - but they did a decent enough job.
The deep, oily basses of Gennady Bezzubenkov and Grigory Karasev lent an unmistakeably Russian flavour, and Kristina Kapustinskaya was back for a second striking performance, this time as Tamara's guardian angel. Perched behind the orchestra, her voice floated over them like a ribbon of dark smoke.
But once again it was Gergiev's star that shone most brightly. The clangour of the battle scene, the subtlest of string pianissimi, the nod to Russian liturgical chant - those all-too-brief flashes of Rubinstein's genius that elevate this work above the merely pedestrian - these were shaped lovingly and with the utmost craftsmanship.
Another time, another place, another company and this would have been just another also-ran opera, a rightly-forgotten relic. But Gergiev and the Mariinsky proved the power of a great performance.
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Parsifal - Opéra Bastille, Paris, 4 March 2008
I wondered if we were going to get a five hour concert performance when I saw the opening set-up for this Parsifal -- a giant white screen fronted by a row of perspex chairs. But as the Vorspiel began, so did the video show. First a ten foot hand rose to scrawl the words amour, foi, esperance on the screen, then there were drawings of the grail, the spear and the cross. So far so obvious.
2001:A Space Odyssey
Christof Schlingensief's infamous Bayreuth Parsifal borrows visual ideas from the final section of Kubrick's most Wagnerian of movies, 2001.
The next move of this Parsifal's director, Krzysztof Warlikowski was to go one step further than Schlingensief, and screen a few minutes of the film itself. Were we expected to be cine-literate enough to recognise the movie, and contextualise the parallels between Dave's 2001 odyssey and Parsifal's journey to enlightment? Or was it just, source aside, a cool clip of an bed-ridden old guy that had an immediate resonance in Parsifal's elderly Titurel, or perhaps the sick Amfortas?
It contrasted stylistically with everything that followed, and was a puzzling way to fill a visual gap that had no need of filling - Hartmut Haenchen did a magnificent job in the pit from the off, bold in his breakneck pacing and fearlessly extreme dynamic shifts - it would have been more than ehough simply to listen.
Dead Ringers
The screen then rolled away to show that the production budget had stretched to some real scenery as well. In front of a huge amphitheatre, red-gowned medics toiled at the bedside of Amfortas (another movie quote, this time Cronenberg's Dead Ringers) as the Vorspiel drew to a close.
And all that before anyone had even sung a note.
Once the screen had been stowed, we had a little relief from spot-the-movie-reference, and Warlikowski's staging turned to real life, or perhaps reality TV, for inspiration. His purpose seemed to be to demythologise the Parsifal tale, to render it more human.
The amphitheatre was now the hall of the grail knights, here clad in Hovis-ad argyle jumpers. Gurnemanz, the sonorous Franz Josef Selig, was presented as a sort of business manager to the brotherhood, complete with suited assistants and an unexplained small boy. Titurel, in a wheelchair, and Amfortas, on crutches, were equally prosaically drawn.
Kundry wasn't the raving wild woman of the woods we usually see. The ginger-wigged and emerald-gowned Waltraud Meier was composed and elegant, offering her healing balsam to Gurnemanz with the efficient manner of a busy GP.
Benny from Crossroads
Did they show Crossroads in Poland? The stumbling beanie-sporting Parsifal of Christopher Ventris bore a striking resemblance to Benny, not so much innocent as just plain dim.
With characters drawn on such a decidedly human scale, it was no surprise that the dead swan Parsifal staggered in with was either a PETA-baiting original, or the most lifelike facsimile you could imagine.
It was a pity that Warlikowski again seemed unable to trust the music alone to hold the audience. FX intruded as the amphitheatre spun around to provide a backdrop for some smartypants word-projections of a fairly obvious nature during Gurnemanz's long narrative sections. Duplicating the surtitles - mostly in the wrong place - was more confusing than illuminating.
For the second act, quite properly a complete contrast from the first, the amphitheatre was bathed in red light to resemble a Roman ruin. Klingsor, all in red, was, like the grail knights, accessorised with a gratuitous small boy. Evgeny Nikitin, seemingly hewn from the same forest as Dmitri Hvorostovsky, exercised a little effortfully camp villainry, but the undoubted power of his performance lay in his darkly commanding voice. Kundry was shown as the victim of his physical power, brute force, not any mystical enchantment.
Klingsor's flower maidens were glamorous Hollywood beauties seated at cocktail tables. Their seduction of Parsifal involved whipping off his dinner suit, then tying him in his sturdy M&S-style vest and underpants to a chair. Intentionally, or probably not, it was the only real laugh of the night. Though the inexplicably spear-free second act climax ran it a close second, as the twitching Klingsor was felled Dracula-style by a gigantic cross of laser red light.
There was huge applause for Nikitin, and even more for Meier and Ventris at the second act curtain call. Meier shot a few notes wide of goal, but was otherwise at her radiant best. It's a measure of the acting ability of Christopher Ventris that he's so different from one role to the next, even from one production to the next, that his own character never seems to impose on a production. Here as ever he gave an unblemished performance.
It was all going so well. Then Warlikowski made the mistake of prefacing the third act with a screening of the last few minutes of Roberto Rossellini's Germany Year Zero, where a small boy commits suicide in the ruins of postwar Berlin. Again I wondered quite what we were supposed to get from this -- outside the context of the film from which it was taken it's simply a meaningless stroll ending in a meaningless death. A sprinkling of applause was overwhelmed by boos and catcalls, silenced immediately the music began.
The third act, strictly realistic again, was played out mostly in a little salad garden at the front of the stage by visibly aged protagonists.
And at last the purpose of the small boy on stage was revealed. Warlikowski made the unusual choice of finishing with a family celebration, glasses raised all round, rather than Kundry's death. Parsifal became the father, Kundry the mother, Amfortas the grandfather in a rather dubious rewrite of Wagner's ending. Although faith (foi) had been one of the words laboriously spelled out on the opening screen, it seemed this was not to be understood in the religious sense of blind devotion to the unknown, but in the everyday enactment of the bonds of human relationships. In this sense at least Warlikowski can be credited with casting a fresh light on Parsifal.
But the final honours of the evening have to go to Hartmut Haenchen. His dense, pacy reading had both weight and excitement, and demonstrated perfectly that when people criticise Parsifal for its supposed dullness, it's the conductor who's at fault, not the composer.
He nearly deafened me by placing the first act 'offstage' trumpets a few feet away from me at the side of the orchestra stalls, and lost cohesion in the choir by setting them around the balconies. But the boldness of the intent could not be faulted, and the effect, while flawed, had undeniable dramatic impact, as did his selective suspended silences. And he coaxed the most refined playing imaginable from the orchestra, a fat, burnished string sound and the most polished brass.
Warlikowski interviewed by Le Monde (in French) here. Waltraud Meier interviewed by Le Figaro (in French) here.
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