Die Meisterbaker

We can only imagine how thrilled Matti Salminen must have been when he learned more than just singing skills were required for his role as Gurnemanz in Cologne Opera's new Parsifal.

Director Carlus Padrissa has deemed that the veteran bass will mix, knead and bake ten loaves of bread during the six-hour show. These will be distributed to the salivating audience at the end.

For anyone who can't wait that long, the opera house is for the first time providing a restaurant service during intermssions.

Comments

[SJT]

I'm so sorry to read that Salminen's career has reached the point at which he takes on a role merely because he kneads the dough....

[William Lau]

I was at the dress rehearsal of Mar 27. All Salminen has to do is to knead the dough during Act 1, nothing special. The dough is then put in a made-believe oven at the prelude of Act 3. The distributed bread, I think, is not the product of Salminen's hand. It was cold, stale, probably bought in the morning.

Dress rehearsals are not to be taken too seriously, but the show won't run to 6 hours. Music alone, Stenz took 215 minutes (92+59+64). Unless the intervals are extended (to allow audiences to eat at the restaurant), the show would end in 5 hours.

[Daffyd]

That is truly excellent. If this were the daily mail I'd give you a green arrow.

[SJT]

If this were the Daily Mail, I wouldn't even be here...

[SJT]

Hang on a minute (which God knows is more than Stenz evidently does). Have you any idea how fast this is? 215' !!!!! It is actually faster than Boulez's notorious canter through the score in 1970, which remains to this day the fastest performance ever recorded at Bayreuth since the opera's premiere there in 1882.

Solti took 260'. Herbie got through it in about 257'. To everyone's surprise and disappointment, Levine had a bad attack of the uncharacteristic Toscaninis - himself the conductor of Bayreuth's slowest ever performance, in 1931: 282' - and clocked in at 273'. The only latterday surprise has been Thielemannn's account, expected to be long-drawn, which both at Bayreuth and Vienna barely scraped past 240'. Daniele Gatti conducted Herheim's stupendous Bayreuth staging for four consecutive years until last year, and has just done the new Met as well, all clocking it at variously around 260'

Boulez's was 218' and nobody could quite believe it, either then or now. And you're telling us that Stenz scoots through in 215'?!?! Contact the Guinness Book of Records immediately!

[William Lau]

The Act 1 prelude was done in 9 minutes, that gives you an idea...

I think Stenz still didn't break Richard Strauss's Bayreuth record. It is somewhere near, or maybe less than 200 minutes. Someone with the exact figures please come up.

I'll give you one more timing. Mikko Franck's at Zurich Opera, Mar 28.
100+65+72=237
I guess you'd be more comfortable with that.

[SJT]

Strauss in 1933 certainly oonducted the-then fastest ever Parsifal at Bayreuth, and countered criticisms with the irrefutable logic of "It isn't me who's fast, it's you lot who have spent decades getting slower and slower. I'm going back to what Wagner wanted".

But Boulez outstripped him in 1970: it's all in the Bayreuth archives.

And it isn't a matter of what I'd be comfortable with: I like the Boulez account, ruined only as it is by a bland and uncommitted Parsifal (James King) and an execrably badly shrieked Kundry (Blodwen, even then). I grew up with Goodall conducting Wagner, and his Parsifal on record takes all but 300'. It's a matter of what suits the score..

[SJT]

http://www.wagneropera.net/Operas/Intro-Parsifal.htm

Scroll down the page for the nuts and bolts, not ideally comprehensive, but unusually accurate.

Herr Stenz's 9' prelude as you can see is effectively unprecedented. I love to hear it.