Parsifal: ENO's knight to remember

Parsifal - English National Opera, 16 February 2011

It’s not often these days that ENO let actual trained opera directors loose on their productions. This Nikolaus Lehnhoff revival is a reminder of happier days, but the welcome is a qualified one. Time may stand still in Monsalvat but it marches swiftly on in the world of opera. Cardboardy sets and holiday camp lighting lend the 1999 production an old-fashioned look unworthy of the thoughtful ideas behind it.  It didn't help that the house lights were up high enough to read a book for the whole evening.

The giant wheel in which the central scenes are set evokes Schopenhauer’s (and by extension, Buddhist) influence on Wagner’s opera. This reveals the Grail kingdom and Klingsor’s realm not as polar opposites but as steps forward (or back?) on the same never-ending path. Costumes provide more eastern references, from Gurnemanz’s Samurai robe to Klingsor’s Kabuki wrap.  Parsifal himself is transformed from a rough swan-hunting savage in animal skins to a black-clad Samurai warrior. The Grail knights are a dusty terracotta army. Rubble spills periodically from the wings at the start but it’s not obvious whether the quarrying is intended to create a route in or out of the knights’ rocky enclave. Or perhaps it’s just fall out from the meteorite that hovers behind the first scene. It’s no clearer in the final act, when a rail track appears from a hole hewn into the stone. But perhaps that’s the point.  

The cast were all in the right place at the right time if not sooner – a certain anticipation of words and music was a drawback for all except John Tomlinson’s economically-played Gurnemanz, a hidebound traditionalist who at the end rejects the progress offered by Parsifal. The part sits well for him, showcasing his incredible diction and expressive powers without exposing too much of the increasing wobble.

Stuart Skelton’s Parsifal simply cemented the promise he showed in ENO’s recent Peter Grimes. Physically he tended to do five things where one would suffice, but vocally he has it all. The tone is sweet yet manly. The vitality and clarity plead or command or with equal ease. Richard Stokes’ solid but not always singer-friendly translation is particularly unkind to this role, but even an impossibly-held final ‘shrine’ didn’t sour.

It looks as if ENO aren’t going to tell us precisely why Iréne Theorin dropped out. Her replacement, Jane Dutton has a nice enough voice for Mozart but not nearly enough power or presence for Kundry. She battled gamely through costume changes which would have challenged even Lady Gaga, including a spectacular ‘hatching’ from a crinolined carapace into a clinging sheath whilst lying flat out on stage.

Iain Paterson’s frantic bandaged Amfortas was more Monty Python than tragic. While his diction could be improved, his singing was an elegant and musical counterweight to his unfortunately comic appearance.

The Flowermaidens too were hampered by ridiculous costumes. Supplemented by dancers they were an unalluring bunch in nun-like robes with vast droopy sleeves, and testicular appendages clamped to their wimpled heads. All soloists though were excellent, a lot better than I expected to hear.

Although Mark Wiggleworth drew some of the most technically accomplished playing I’ve heard from the ENO orchestra in ages, it lacked either an alertness to drama or a larger sense of purpose. For all the evident quality of detail, the bigger picture remained elusive.

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

 
  
 
 

production photos: Richard Hubert Smith

curtain call photos: intermiezzo.typepad.com

Comments

[C.R.]

curtain call photos: intermiezzo -- miau :). ok, this only works in german ...

[FC]

Hurray - finally someone mentions John Tomlinson's wobble. I was starting to think there was an international conspiracy going on, as everyone else very strangely seems to "overlook" this problem....

[Nikolaus Vogel]

Several of the reviews of his King Marke at Covent Garden mentioned the frayed quality of some of his singing and his difficulties at the top, so the international conspiracy doesn't seem to extend to the mainstream London press.

[Stephen Follows]

Wobble? If you plotted it on a graph it'd come out as a sine wave.

As for Wigglesworth's celebrated conducting, I nodded off for most of Act One, and the bits I was awake for weren't much better. Not a vintage Parsifal when the first signs of life come in with the Flower Maidens.

[Pamela]

Well Stephen, as you enjoyed Lucrezia Borgia and keep defending the awful Rupert Goold, Sally Potter et al, it really comes as no surprise that you didn't enjoy Parsifal. You have SO much to say about opera performance for someone who knows SO little about opera...

[vecchio john]

For me the outer acts of Saturday's performance showed Wigglesworth majestic grasp of the sublime span of these acts. Act 2 was seriously let down by the dry raspy Klingsor and vocally challenged homely Kundry. None too good tuning from the flower maidens either.

Stuart Skelton is one of the most gifted heldentenors in years, though he needs to learn the virtues of stillness.
Front of house staff were desperately pushing leaflets for L.Borgia.

[Keithyboy]

@Vecchio John: That's a polite way to put it - I thought they were 'pimping' Lucrezia Borgia'...

[Stephen Follows]

Speaking as a former Olivier Awards judge for opera, and as someone who sets all the opera questions for three major broadcast quiz shows, I shall ignore silly, immature comments which equate having opinions with which someone doesn't agree with being ignorant.

I'm glad the rest of you found Wigglesworth's conducting inspiring. Retaining the memory as I do of previous, genuinely transcendental, Parsifals conducted by Rattle (both in London and Amsterdam), Gergiev, Haitink and Goodall, among others, I didn't. Add to this the audibly declining Tomlinson, the ghastly Fox and the overparted Dutton, and this was, musically, at least, a deeply unsatisfactory and disappointing evening. (Skelton, however, was excellent, as was Paterson, once he'd stopped falling about.) The Lehnhoff production, which seemed groundbreaking and original on its first appearance twelve years, now seems rather turgid and dreary, with production details, such as Kundry's rebirth out of haute couture into more haute couture, and Titurel's impersonation of a newt, that are frankly risible. And that's ignoring the fact that it's all rather better sung and played on the Nagano DVD.

Anyway, why shouldn't ENO advertise one production to the audience of another? It seems a perfectly reasonable thing for any company to do, and it's also something they've done for as long as I can remember - since my first ENO production in 1981, indeed - and with Rutter, Miles, Fabiano and DeShong, there's rather more top-notch singing in Lucrezia, for my money, than in the Parsifal. But I guess that's just ignorance on my part...

[Pamela]

*Yawn* And there's me thinking Gurnemanz was the biggest bore in all opera...

[Roger Chesher]

Acclaimed Production? I was beginning to think I was the little boy in the "Emperor's New Clothes" As a production this was easily the most ill conceived Parsifal I have ever witnessed, yet musically one of the best.
Wigglesworth took the orchestra to new heights and paced the piece perfectly. The translation did not sit easily with me, however and I think the Porter version sings much better, taking more account of stabreim; but, with modern surtitles why does this piece need to be sung in English anyway ? This spoiled Tomlinson's otherwise magnificent account.
In Skelton we have great promise.Now good, hopefully he will become a great Heldentenor. He has stamina, heft and tone but just needs a little more klang, but please someone, tell him to lay off the pies and get some exercise. That will make his movement so much easier. His entrance cause audible titters, humpty dumpty descending from his wall? And stop those ridiculous curtain call antics.
I am all for experimentation in production but it must be meaningful and ultimately true to the author. The transformations, absence of spear hovering, total lack of a grail and Kundry's non-death were just a few of the important points central to the metaphysical understanding of the most schopenhauerian of Wagner's operas. Admittedly the start of act three is bleak, but the rest of the opera is not.
This production is simply risible. After seeing Lenhoff's Tristan I expected a rare treat. Never have I been so disappointed

[a mac]

@ Roger Chesher - guess you haven't seen the Teatro Real/Royal Opera effort !

Overall a good night at ENO - just as it was about 12 years ago (wow where did my life go !) The key test for me was that it doesn't feel like 5.5 hours when you leave the theatre !

Personally I have always found the production intriguing - parts of it are excellent although they are some oddities as have already been commented on. The lighting seemed more garish than before - possibly an adjustment to that would have made a difference. Also I seem to remember last time the flower maidens' wand-things lighted up with a red bulb on the end - I guess the batteries ran out !

I can't say that the conducting was the greatest exponent of the piece and didn't reach the standards of Elder in the last run- but it was certainly not incompetent.

I see from the 2004 DVD - "Christopher Ventris in the title-role and the first-class American bass Tom Fox as Klingsor. " Presumably was is the same Tom Fox ?!?!

[Ellie]

So - I went to see this this afternoon - I really enjoyed it. I've just got a quick question for Wagner buffs - is it normal for Klingsor and Titurel not to bother to stay for the curtain call? Made for a pretty small bowing session. Okay these things often go on far too long, but we just had all the knights, the 4 main singers and conductor. The flower maidens/off-side choruses were nowhere to be seen either. I felt we could only acknowledge half the cast. Is this normal? I can't recall this happening in other Wagners I've seen - and if they were going to leave to go to the pub/home, maybe they could have taken a bow at the end of their respective acts, or something... Any thoughts?

[Vecchio John]

Hi Ellie,
ENO have never allowed act end curtain calls, and that's a bit hard on singers who appear in Acts 1 & 2 of Parsifal. I cannot imagine I would want to hang around for 3 hours though and perhaps they had other engagements.

Yvonne Minton once sang the Second Norn in the Prologue to Götterdämmerung at Covent Garden, popped over the river for a Mahler song cycle at the RFH, and came back as a Rhinemaiden in the last act and doubtless still had time to put her feet up and watch the tv as well.

Applause at Parsifal is a special case, as in my early days the first act was received in silence, and even a couple a years in Vienna the few who were foolhardy enough to applaud here were quickly shushed.

[jeff vincent]

Ellie - Titurel and Klingsor didn't stay for the curtain at Covent Garden 2007 either. They were Gwyn Howell and Willard White, and would have got a big cheer. I suppose they don't want to hang around with slap on.

[Maria Dunn]

Curtain calls at the end of each act just break the drama, and everyone coming out smiling. If you're in an opera, quite honestly you should be there for the start and finish of it all, and be part of the whole experience - or forfeit the curtain calls. It doesn't help to run off as if you're escaping early on a Friday from an office job:) It's about commitment to the whole thing and working with colleagues. As someone who was in Scottish Opera Chorus, we were required to stay around to the end of the opera and take a curtain call at the end. Our soloists never complained either, some of whom were doing small parts and only in perhaps Act 1, or even the last act.

Beauty of voice is great if you have got it, but it soon becomes very boring if you can't hear the words, particularly in English. John Tomlinson has never had a 'beautiful' voice. He would probably be the first to admit it, but he does certainly know how to use what he has to his best ability, and is authorative. He is 65 and a great example of Wagner not damaging his voice. His diction is a great example to any singer who moans and groans about singing in English. As Graham Vick says, if you want to communicate, then you have to use the language of you audience. That is what Bach and Wagner did for his audience in Germany, or Bizet in France or Tschaikovsky in Russia. The fact that we don't have much opera in English to talk about in the 19th Century, there is always a case for there being a house in London to offer foreign opera in English for those who CHOOSE go to and hear it, as I do. No one has to go to hear opera in English. It is so easy now to travel, pop over to Berlin or Paris and get opera in the original language in a place where it is the language of the people.

Don't be too hard on our British singers, and people like John Tomlinson.

[Vecchio John]

MD,

It is a pity that Scottish Opera .are performing their upcoming Intermezzo (not an opera on the life of our doyenne a la Anna Nicole but the R.Strauss piece) auf Deutsch. If ever an opera needed to be performed in the vernacular it is this one. Greatly looking forward to it nonetheless.

[TheManOnTheBus]

Does anyone know of any text offers for the last couple of performances. There was one for some earlier dates....

[Ruth]

TMotB, I strongly doubt you'll find any offers for Saturday as it is virtually sold out, but TKTS have consistently had good seats for all midweek performances of this for £25, and will be my first port of call for a ticket for tomorrow.

[Richard Carter]

There's one more performance to go (on Saturday) but, after enduring last night's (visually appalling) production, I'd suggest anyone who wants to enjoy it had best wait for the Radio 3 broadcast.

It was TERRIBLE: worse even than the Bayreuth Tristan, and that's saying something. I don't mind if the stage directions are interpreted liberally, adapting things for the current situation is fine, but this was ludicrous. The set was a horrible concrete patio, sloping up at the back: not a tree in sight, and it stayed like that with minor modifications for all 3 acts. The flower garden in act 2 was ... the same, no flowers and rather drearily dressed (and unseductive) flower maidens and Kundry looking more like Humpty Dumpty than the great seducer; OK if you're heavily into eggs, I suppose, but otherwise completely hopeless. When Parsifal catches the spear (well, Klingsor just handed it to him about in about as menacing fashion as a bowl of yesterday's porridge), the collapse of his castle was showed by a couple of chairs falling over and a small rain of pieces of black paper). And the set for Act 3 was simply ludicrous: a post-industrial landscape with (get this!) a railway line appearing from out of the back of the stage!

And ENO persist in describing this as a classic revival, saying "Nikolaus Lehnhoff's Parsifal was instantly acclaimed as one of the great Wagnerian stagings of our time." Unbelievable!