Don't look now, but it's my one hundredth opera, so I wanted to choose something that would seem appropriately momentous. So, I watched this. And I didn't feel as though I'd really grasped it, so I watched this. And as a result...I still don't feel like I've really grasped it, but man alive have I ever seen a shit-ton of Parsifal.
So there are these grail knights. The main one that we see is Gurnemanz. They're keeping the Holy Grail; they're supposed to also be keeping the holy spear that pierced Christ's side, but unforunately, it has been stolen by the evil sorcerer Klingsor, who also used it to stab the boss of the knights, Amfortas, who is now plagued by a wound that will never heal unless the spear can be recovered. There's also Kundry, a mysterious woman who sort of comes and goes and tries to help and is enigmatic and maybe bad. Parsifal "the pure fool made wise by compassion" (and if nothing else that is a beautiful turn of phrase) appears, having shot a swan, to everyone's consternation. He doesn't know who he is or anything about himself or anything, and Gurnemanz thinks he's hopeless. That's the first act. Then, we're in Klingsor's den, and we see that Kundry is under his power. Parsifal appears and these flower maidens try to seduce him but fail and then Kundry, at Klingsor's behest, does the same, but fails (and yup, the sex=sin theme is strong here), and then he defeats Klingsor and recovers the spear. That's the second act. Then we're back at the grail knight place on Good Friday. Parsifal reappears with the spear. Amfortas is going to die but then doesn't 'cause of spear power. Kundry dies for no reason. And that, my friends, is about that.
Let's start by comparing these two versions. It was pretty inevitable that, if choose just one, I was going to go with the new version, because, you know, Jonas Kaufmann. It's not that Siegfried Jerusalem is bad in the role, far from it, but I have to admit, the aesthetics of some of these older recordings (not that 1992 is particularly old!) just don't do it for me. Still, if I have to choose, I do think the new cast is stronger: I might prefer Waltraud Meier in the old version as Kundry, but the new one has not only Kaufmann but also René Pape as Gurnemanz and an unnervingly intense Evgeny Nikitin as Klingsor.
Productionwise, the situation is a little murkier. The recent production takes place in a non-specific but vaguely post-apocalyptic wasteland (with big pools of blood in Klingsor's lair!). It looks cool, and it's nothing inappropriate, I certainly wouldn't call it Eurotrash, but it is a bit jarring, given how often characters comment on the beauty of the nature all around them, for them to actually surrounded by nothing but bare, cracked earth. The older one is by Otto Schenk, and as with his Ring production, it's a bit kitschy/amateurish-looking, but possibly a better fit with the piece. Overall, though, I'd still go with the new one, given the choice.
Well, you know. Wagner wrote some sublime music for this, if less iconic or instantly attention-grabbing than some of his previous. And there are some great bits here and there, especially in the second act, which, after all, features an evil sorcerer. But you know...I feel like a bit of a philistine saying this, but screw you, I've watched a hundred operas (actually a hundred one; I saw Attila after my first viewing of this), I can say what I want: more often than not, good god this is boring. I was unable to watch it in its entirety in one sitting either time, because my eyes just kept glazing over (hey, I thought it would get better the second time! I'm not a nut! You're the nut!).
On the wikipedia page, Mark Twain is cited as saying "in Parsifal there is a hermit named Gurnemanz who stands on the stage in one spot and practices by the hour, while first one and then another of the cast endures what he can of it and then retires to die." That's not really an accurate summation, but somehow it feels right, at least emotionally. Truthy, if you will. And it made me laugh, so let's go with it. The spirituality doesn't do much for me, and as much as I love the phrase "made wise by compassion," this plays out, I would say, pretty thinly. Also--I know this is a weirdly specific thing to mention, in the context--there's this one line that struck me as bizarrely mean and juvenile both watchings: Gurnemanz is questioning Parsifal about his identity and not getting anything, at which he concludes "a duller wit I've never met, except Kundry." Da hell, dude? She's right there! And it's not like the opera's done anything to make her seemespecially dumb, so...? I will say, though, that I do not detect anything that looks like anti-Semitism here (people suggest that Klingsor is meant to be a Jewish caricature, but I don't see that at all). As far as I'm concerned, Mime is the only questionable element in any of his music.
I dunno. Now I've seen eleven out of thirteen Wagner operas (Die Feen doesn't seem to be available except in an attenuated children's version; I could get a dvd of Rienzi, but I'm not sure I care enough), and my feelings are definitely mixed; his talent is impossible to deny, but OOF. For the non-obsessive, I might recommend just Rheingold, Walküre,Meistersinger, and probably Tristan.
But anyway, here's to a hundred more operas, assuming I don't abruptly get bored with the form for no particular reason.
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