Of the many exciting new productions at Covent Garden
this season, Simon Rattle’s Parsifal, remarkably
his first Wagnerian production at the House, indeed his first performance
there for over a decade, was perhaps the most eagerly anticipated of
the year, and was reflected in the scrum for last minute tickets. Was
it, however, likely to be as good as the Proms concert performance of
the Netherlands Opera staging of this supreme Wagnerian masterpiece
a year ago, conducted by the same maestro, or, indeed, his original
production in Rotterdam some time before that? Well, yes and no. There
can be no adequate replacement for a good, staged setting of such a
seminal opera as this, however expensive it maybe to put on in these
straitened times of ours: and yet the immense expectation for this Covent
Garden Parsifal was only realised in part, after the staggering
Proms achievement of a year ago.
These opening reservations should not detract from
the fact that here was a conductor on top form, directing a work in
which he totally believes. Rattle inspired both his orchestra, and indeed
his singers, to new heights of excellence; the orchestra sounded more
like their colleagues in Vienna, than the common or garden pit bands
that we are often used to. The sheen of the string line was quite remarkable,
while the brass were wholly secure, from first note to last. I have
never heard the ‘Vorspiel’ played with such ethereal rapture, and the
Motet of the Sacrament, that of the Grail (or the ‘Dresden Amen’), and
finally the Motet of Faith - all were intoned solemnly by the tutti
brass. One can only wait, in scarcely concealed impatience, for Rattle’s
‘Ring’ Cycle (scheduled for Aix). But it will be a foolish record company
that does not take the opportunity to set down Rattle’s remarkable Parsifal
in the near future, which must rank with Karajan’s legendary 1980 reading,
amongst the greatest of the last fifty years.
The cast were a mixed blessing, I’m afraid: this is
not to say that, overall, the line-up was anything other than stellar,
but there were some singers who acquitted themselves better than others,
and when comparison is made with previous Parsifal performances,
then the Covent Garden cast do suffer somewhat. Both John Tomlinson
and Thomas Hampson were outstanding as Gurnemanz and Amfortas.
Some criticism, from various quarters, have dismissed Tomlinson, a fine
actor, as having been left with nothing to do but sing out his part,
while the American was reduced to ‘pulling faces straight out of a Mary
Pickford film’. This is a little unfair, since the basis of the opera
is essentially static, with only the occasional descent into cataclysmic
excess. Hampson’s portrayal of the Sick King was, in fact, quite superb,
bringing out the physical and mental agonies he must undergo, until
a hero might be found to restore his health and reunite the Grail and
the Lance. I had not seen Hampson on stage before, but his performance
has left me wanting to seek out further examples of his art. In the
second act, Williard W. White was excellent as the sorcerer Klingsor,
evil magician personified, as he tries to exercise control over the
errant Kundry: it was just a shame that by the final curtain, White
had already upped sticks and left the building.
The major difference, surely, between the second and
third acts must be the inner conflict within Kundry herself, between
the Repentent and the Seducer, and with Violeta Urmana, I think
that a little was lost in her portrayal of the fallen woman. According
to the stage directions she appears at the beginning of Act II dressed,
not as a wild horsewoman, dishevelled and in loathsome drapes, but as
a beautiful temptress, clad in oriental finery. Yet Urmana turned up
in precisely the same, rather anonymous, outfit that she had worn in
Act I. I know that the finances at Covent Garden are in a parlous state,
but surely somebody could have forked out the money for a change of
costume for the poor girl (compare this with Cosi fan Tutte
at the House a few weeks ago, when the young lovers needed no further
invitation to appear in a new outfit, especially if it was designed
by Giorgio Armani). In fact she appeared desperate to avoid getting
her new frock dirty and the writhing around that we were so looking
forward to in Act I just did not happen. Ms Urmana has a decent delivery,
but I failed to detect very much in the way of acting ability on the
basis of this performance. Once again, compare Petra Lang’s wonderful
acting at the concert version of Parsifal last year: with
Ms Lang, one can hear the battle raging in her soul, between good and
evil, between Christianity and Paganism, and Ms Urmana was ordinary
by comparison.
Again, Stig Andersen was a tenor I had not previously
seen on stage: he had, as I remember, played Siegfried in the Royal
Opera trip to the Albert Hall a couple of years ago in the complete
‘Ring’ cycle, where reviews had been decidedly mixed. Andersen’s is
an interesting voice, but once again, his acting ability let him down,
and far too often he was rooted to the spot, like a latter day Pavarotti,
rather than risking any foolhardy attempts at dramatic involvement.
The comparison with Poul Elming, in last year’s concert performance,
does him no favours at all.
The minor roles were taken by the usual Covent Garden
stalwarts, and there was not a weak link in their armour: Susan Gritton
and Leah-Marian Jones were suitably enticing as the Flower Maidens,
and Geraldine McGreevy, making her Royal Opera debut, was especially
fine. The production was predictably abominable, with Klaus Michael
Gruber winning the dubious honour of uniting the whole House against
his ridiculous notions: but then anyone who sat (or indeed stood) through
sixteen hours of Wagner, in Haitink’s ‘Ring’ Cycle for Covent Garden
a few years ago, with that nasty, cheap and misogynist ‘interpretation’
by Richard Jones, will be well nigh immune to anything that such ‘modernist’
artists can throw at us. To illustrate the point: can anyone tell me
the reasoning behind the shark hanging from the rafters in the second
act, in Klingsor’s Magic Garden, for I should love to know: it is all
just a little fishy for my taste.
Simon Rattle’s achievement in this most supreme of
Wagnerian masterpieces cannot be doubted: one may carp and criticise
about incidental matters of the cast needing to act as well as sing,
and remembering all too well the Rotterdam Opera visit to the Proms
last year: indeed, one wag suggested that Parsifal at
Covent Garden was a concert performance in costume, while the Albert
Hall was the other way around: but I could not be so cruel. This was,
afterall, a fairly wonderful evening in Bow Lane.
Ben Killeen
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