It was all going so well. Two acts down in tonight's premiere of Parsifal at the Opera Bastille in Paris, and it looked as if director Krzysztof Warlikowski might have pulled off the impossible - an interesting modern take on Parsifal that still managed to respect the music and tell the story.
Wrong. To everyone's surprise, the third act opened with the lowering of a mighty screen.
A statement from Roberto Rossellini flashed up, then the last few minutes of his classic movie Germany Year Zero began to roll in total silence. So we watched German child Edmund wandering through the ruins of shattered postwar Berlin before throwing himself off the top of a building. It illustrated a point that didn't require further illustration and ruptured the production.
Paris audiences are open to novel interpretations - everybody loved Act 2 where Parsifal (Christopher Ventris) rolled around blindfold on the floor in his underpants with a chair tied to his back - but this was a step too far. Booing and heckling broke out - "c'est l'opéra, pas le cinéma" was a particularly well-judged one amongst the shouts of "musique!", "Wagner!" - and completely overwhelmed the minimal applause at the end of the sequence.
***update*** More on the performance itself here.
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