Parsifal review

When Wagner had his Festspielhaus built in Bayreuth in the 1870s, it featured a recessed orchestra pit, then an innovation of theatre design. As well as subduing the players in favour of the singers, it also afforded the audience an uninterrupted view of the stage.

Opera North’s presentation of Parsifal – Wagner’s final stage work – instead places the orchestra squarely on stage, with the action playing out in front of and behind it, and with some choruses enveloping the audience or singing from the front dress circle boxes either side of the stage. Whether or not Wagner would have approved, it’s an immersive cohesion of singing, playing and drama, not least since the Orchestra of Opera North plays this most beautifully sublime and radiantly mystical of Wagner’s scores with great refinement under one of the country’s leading Wagner conductors, Richard Farnes.

A first-rate cast is at the heart of the production – which goes on tour to Manchester, Nottingham, Gateshead and London in a reduced form. In his role debut as Parsifal, Toby Spence has a strong vocal presence, even if the sound might not dominate the largest theatres. He stages a convincing transformation from ‘pure fool’ – at first unaware (but not blissfully so) of the purpose of the Grail knights – to redeemer of the brotherhood and its leader, Amfortas. Robert Hayward is a deeply layered Amfortas, depleted in body and spirit, and so abjectly racked by guilt for failing to protect the holy spear that his physical wound from it (inflicted by the lapsed knight turned dark magician, Klingsor) seems no more than a visible token of his dishonour. 

Brindley Sherratt is unerring and indefatigable as the veteran knight Gurnemanz, qualities also projected by Katarina Karnéus singing Kundry, the only major female role of the opera; she also skilfully draws together the character’s conflicting strands as seductress of straying knights on the one hand and helper to the brotherhood on the other. With Derek Welton as a powerfully malevolent, horny Klingsor (red triangles along the insides of his trouser legs convene at his crotch), this is a pristine line-up.

Director Sam Brown elicits strong performances and adds some novel twists. One that fails is the bank of light bulbs behind the orchestra, which is largely unable to render anything visually recognisable at all: a projection, or nothing, would have been an improvement. But there are two thought-provoking departures from the libretto. At the Act I grail ritual, the knights (dressed in grey hoodies and combat trousers – timelessly austere yet also contemporary) in turn ritually plunder Amfortas’ wound, reminding us, as they smear his blood over their mouths, that they all share the same shortcomings of character.

And, at the end, with Parsifal having restored the spear to the knights, Kundry, rather than falling lifeless to the ground, appears upstage, cradling a newborn baby in her dress of Marian blue. A cliché or a new hope? That’s up to you.