Parsifal - La Monnaie does it Romeo Castellucci's way

Parsifal - Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie Brussels, 30 January 2010

ENO are you reading? This is how you bring new blood into opera. Romeo Castellucci's operatic experience may be zero, but he's a seasoned theatrical hand with visual flair, wide-ranging technical skills, a probing intellect, a loyal, talented supporting team and a willingness to push the boundaries. And of course a desire to do the job in the first place without being cajoled. How many of ENO's recent first-timers have demonstrated even one of those qualities?  In the face of his numerous practical qualifications, his unique artistic vision seems almost like a bonus.

The Parsifal he has created for La Monnaie is beautiful, haunting and arresting. I say 'created' because while it's not an 'interpretation' in the conventional sense, he doesn't discard or wilfully ignore Wagner's work either. It's more like a complementary visual layer in which he explores Wagner's central theme of transformation, using metaphors as simple as darkness and light, and as oblique as bondage, disguise, and duplication. The possibility of enlightenment and redemption through love exists. Controversially shorn of Christian symbolism and Germanic historicism, it is a humanistic and unexpectedly uplifting vision.

Despite a few visual echoes of his Inferno trilogy (which came to the Barbican a couple of years ago), Castellucci hasn't simply applied a recognisable style in the Robert Wilson/Katie Mitchell sense.  The dramatic pace is as contemplative as the music, yet the spectacle evolves continuously and seamlessly. Movement is deliberate, gesture minimal and meaningful. Where it falls short is in the unfinished feel of the third act, a consequence to some degree of last minute changes made for musical reasons (according to the blog of Andrew Richards, who sang the title role).

As the prelude begins in total blackout, even in the pit, the only thing visible is Hartmut Haenchen's iluuminated baton tip, darting around like a firefly. The darkness lifts to reveal this huge photo of Parsifal fan Nietzsche. A live albino snake hangs wriggling by the philosopher's ear.

A dark, dense forest appears, magically conjured with brilliant 3D projection. An Alsatian stands guard. Time is suspended as huge trees fall slowly and silently to the ground behind. The community sport leafy camouflage, the effect more pagan than militaristic. Where does the environment end and its occupants begin? Parsifal stumbles in looking like an accountant on casual Friday. It is immediately clear, in a way that a purist horns'n'helmet production could never manage, that he neither understands nor fits in to the world in which he finds himself.

As the scene draws to a close for the grail ceremony to begin, brutal strip lighting descends. It drowns the set in a harsh white light, revealing its artifice. That breathtaking simulacrum was nothing more than a few fake trees and some netting. The contrasts Castellucci has drawn in just the first few minutes - nature/culture, community/individual, artifice/authenticity  - inform the entire work. A narrative emerges, or not, as you choose. The wound of Amfortas is revealed gradually, as he peels back layers of costume to reveal first flayed muscle, then bone, and finally, shockingly, nothing (a black t-shirt and clever lighting, if you're wondering). He is hollow inside; his wound is emptiness.

The second act is a total visual contrast, a white box, set mistily behind a white scrim. The loftiest of culture takes nature's place as Klingsor the mad, Mahlerian orchestral conductor sprouts a doppelgänger. Together they truss half-naked women and suspend them like carcases from the ceiling where they slowly spin, ugly-beautiful and dehumanised, like flies parcelled up for a spider's lunch.  Perhaps they are projections of Kundry, whose white snake twined around her neck echoes the binding ropes. Or is she Kundry? She writes her name in big black letters on the back wall - Anna.

170 local extras were brought in for the final act. The forest of trees has become a forest of people, with a cityscape behind them. They trudge relentlessly forward on a wide treadmill - but of course they never get anywhere. Parsifal is at their head, the singers in their midst, half-hidden as they were by the trees earlier, their individual identity subsumed by the mass. It's less complex and ingenious than what came before, and less fully developed. But as the lights go up and Andrew Richards steps forward (and out of character?) for Nur eine Waffe taugt, the message is clear - we're all in this together.

Musically, there are no shortcomings. Hartmut Haenchen conducted with assurance and always perfectly-judged pace, keeping the music alive however solemn the tempo. His is not the sort of conducting that draws attention to itself by pulling the music around. He knows where he's going, and how everything fits together. Tension was built carefully and detail lovingly revealed. He handled the offstage chorus expertly and managed the tricky combination of making singers heard while covering the noise of the stage machinery. If he did indeed force changes to the staging, I can only imagine it was done with the most honest and musical of intentions. He received the warmest applause at the end, and he deserved it.

The cast were equally terrific. I was initially surprised by the casting of Kundry. Anna Larsson, a terrific Erda, is as close as you get to a contralto. But her cello-like timbre has a majestic timeless quality that resonates with the production. Andrew Richards' Parsifal reminded me of Tom Cruise's character in The Last Samurai - the blundering but basically decent American adrift in a foreign world. Only the half-voice he used in some passages didn't quite convince me. Thomas Johannes Mayer brought a lieder-like attention to text to his beautifully-sung Amfortas, and Jan-Hendrik Rootering retained the stamina to make an effective Gurnemanz. Tómas Tómasson's malevolent Klingsor and the veteran Victor von Halem's Titurel rounded off a solid ensemble.

Many photos!

Act 1:

Gurnemanz and canine friend:

Kundry and Parsifal:
 
 

The wound is revealed:

Act 2:
 

 

 

Kundry with snake:
 

The kiss:

Act 3:
 

Gurnemanz and Kundry:
 
 
 

The end - Parsifal is alone:

 Curtain call:
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 

Production photos © Bernd Uhlig

Curtain call photos: intermezzo.typepad.com

More pictures, video, interviews etc on the La Monnaie website.

Comments

[Stephen Follows]

'He's a seasoned theatrical hand with visual flair, wide-ranging technical skills, a probing intellect, a loyal, talented supporting team and a willingness to push the boundaries.'

Sounds just like Rufus Norris.

[Pamela]

I know it's a rhetorical question, but the answer is none. Sally Potter, Rupert Gould, Des McAnuff, Rufus Norris, Mike Figgis - all failed dismally and Berry's seemingly unstoppable desire to supply ENO with a string of unrevivable stagings of core repertoire continues unchecked. It's scandalous that good money is being wasted on old tut like this - and incredulous that he is still in a job! But I saw Loretta Tomasi virtually rolling in the aisles with laughter during the first night of Norris' lamentable staging of Don Giovanni, so what can you expect? Thank God for the Aldens!

[Lucy]

Wow. Wow wow wow. Thanks so much for the detailed review; wish I could see the fascinating production, and bask in the musical richness, in person!

[sfmike]

What a lovely description of the production. Thanks.

[Stephen Follows]

Pamela: It might be incredible, but you're the one who's incredulous. And you could try spelling Rupert Goold's name right, before you slag him off.

[Pamela]

@Stephen - Oooh, I feel suitably chastised. How dare I spell his surname wrong, I'm so very, very sorry. I'm also very, very sorry that I had to sit through his inane version of 'Turandot', I'm also very, very sorry that I failed to grasp his brilliant concept and obviously mistook his totally inept direction of the singers (well there wasn't really any direction of the singers, now was there Mr Follows?) as a sign of his inability to direct the performers, probably due to the fact that he was totally out of his league. I'll now go and stand in the corner, like the naughty girl I've been, I mean how dare I 'slag off' such an incompetent director as Mr Goold!

[Stephen Follows]

Well, you could have tried engaging with the production. It wasn't an obvious Turandot, I suppose, and you did have to think a little about how his concept fitted the received ideas about the piece, which I realise doesn't come easily to a typical opera audience.

But then that was because it had more ideas and conscious thought in it than most of the other opera productions I sat through last year put together, alongside plenty of evidence of direction of the singers, just as his theatre productions always contain extremely detailed direction of the actors and a through rethink of the text. Out of one's league? Only the audience, on this evidence.

[Pamela]

@ Stephen. OK - are you Rupert Goold? No, then are you on drugs? There was no direction of the singers. Paul Charles Clark meandered through the staging looking as though he wished he were somewhere else, not that I blame him! So, you really have no idea what you're talking about I'm afraid.

[Pamela]

Sorry - it was Gwyn Hughes Jones who sang Calaf, not Paul Charles Clarke - apologies to both tenors, but it's often hard to tell them apart - don't ask me to say why.

[Pamela]

I heard a rumour that John Berry has asked Robbie Williams to stage Lohengrin at ENO next season - can anyone verify this?

[Giuseppe W]

It sounds extraordinary, especially that Act I transformation, but the only way to know if it really works is to see it... By the way, the Nietzsche connection is perplexing - until I clicked on the link I had no idea how much he admired Parsifal (elsewhere he is very critical - way too Christian etc.). Even the admiration is still very double-edged. I think I would have been utterly confused by that opening - but that's what the director wants, perhaps...?

I don't want to turn this into a Turandot discussion, but in response to Pamela I would like to note that some critics (David Nice for one) and some operagoers (myself included) were very impressed by the ENO version. And the suggestion that there was no direction of the singers doesn't tally with a single minute of the performance I saw. You may not have liked it, but it was certainly fully realised.

I wasn't completely convinced by the Don Giovanni, but I don't know anybody who thought it was lamentable. Everyone I read/spoke to seemed broadly to agree that it was pretty good but flawed. I suspect the rolling in the aisles story is made up. She'd have been asked to leave at the very least (she would also have been a dreadful philistine). People do seem to like labelling ENO productions failures whether they are or not.