{"id":3694,"date":"2025-10-30T23:16:38","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T03:16:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3694"},"modified":"2025-11-13T17:55:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T22:55:04","slug":"parsifal-then-and-now-a-dei-blitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2025\/10\/parsifal-then-and-now-a-dei-blitz.html","title":{"rendered":"“Parsifal” Then and Now — A DEI Blitz"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Amfortas raises the Grail Cup (<\/em>act one, scene two). Photo by Cory Weaver\/San Francisco Opera<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

So protean are the operas of Richard Wagner that they mirror not merely their own time and place \u2013 Germany of the Romantic era \u2013 but their time and place of performance. In Hitler\u2019s Germany, they embodied creeds of national and racial supremacy. In fin-de-siecle America, they excited melioristic fervor. During this trans-Atlantic heyday of Wagnerism, peaking in the 1880s and 1890s, the enthralled Wagnerites of New York City were not patriots or anti-Semites, decadents or proto-modernists; they preached or practiced uplift. Parsifal<\/em>, accordingly, acquired supreme status in the Wagner canon. It registered as a religious drama invoking Christian iconography. Its obsession with race \u2013 with purity of blood \u2013 passed unnoticed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two recent Parsifal<\/em> manifestations sharply focus the subsequent American history of this valedictory opus \u2013 not a grand opera or music drama, but a \u201csacred festival play\u201d which summarizes and complicates Wagner\u2019s artistic legacy in equal measure.  The first is the appearance, on four CDs, of a legendary Metropolitan Opera Parsifal<\/em> broadcast: the Good Friday matinee of April 15, 1938. The other is a new Parsifal<\/em> production at the San Francisco Opera. The 1938 Met broadcast was previously only available in wretched sound; the new restoration, by Ward Marston<\/a> (who specializes in scrubbing old recordings), may be the Wagner event of the year. It documents in full the role of Parsifal as sung by the supreme Wagner tenor of his generation: Lauritz Melchior. It also happens, not so incidentally, to include the participation of no fewer than five Jewish artists. If the Met Parsifal<\/em> documents wartime intensity and displacement, the San Francisco Parsifal<\/em> (October 25 to November 13) equally betokens today. Its obtrusive emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusivity mangles the opera\u2019s central sermon: that only innocence breeds true compassion.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Met\u2019s Wagner lineage is long and august. Four successive Wagner conductors of high consequence presided: Anton Seidl (who arrived in 1885 as Wagner\u2019s onetime prot\u00e9g\u00e9 and surrogate son), Gustav Mahler (who quit the Vienna Opera for New York), Arturo Toscanini (who pushed Mahler aside in 1908 and stayed through 1915), and Artur Bodanzky (who died one year after the 1938 Parsifal<\/em> now restored). If the company\u2019s stagings were often indifferent, its international casts were at all times stellar. Considered musically, the Met could credibly be called the world\u2019s leading Wagner house for fully half a century. It is a claim difficult to absorb because Bodanzky is today little remembered \u2013 and because the enveloping intensity of engagement driving Bodanzky\u2019s Wagner broadcasts quickly became a thing of the past. If recalled at all, he is notorious for brisk tempos and bulky abridgements (undertaken in consideration of an audience that mainly spoke no German).          <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Bodanzky\u2019s 1938 Parsifal<\/em> is neither fast nor trimmed . The Prelude \u2013 this opera\u2019s keynote, emanating from existential darkness to predict a vast trajectory of quest and redemption \u2013 is exceptionally slow. Its sustained gravitas is humbling. The entirety of the first act, lasting 107 minutes, is so raptly focused that the curtain falls in silence: there are no applause. Even more remarkable is act three, a reading of awesome weight and breadth, in which Wagner\u2019s \u201cGood Friday Spell\u201d transfigures a mythic forest on Easter Sunday morning. Parsifal is here a holy fool returned from wandering the world. He brings with him the Speer that once wounded Christ on the cross. Empowered by compassion, he redeems the brotherhood of knights who safeguard a second holy relic: the Grail Cup from which Christ drank at the Last Supper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the protagonist in this drama, Melchior is sui generis, his tenor fresh and true, heroic and intimate, a bearer of clarion proclamations and whispered intimacies, a purveyor of words and thoughts. The swelling refulgence of his final invitation — “\u00f6ffnet den Shrein!” — is itself a vocal miracle. He is partnered by Emanuel List as Gurnemanz, Friedrich Schorr as Amfortas, and Arnold Gabor as Klingsor. That all three, and also Bodanzky, were Jews born abroad is not irrelevant. \u00a0Three of the roles they here enact are studies in displacement by the composer who most complexly understood the outsider: Klingsor, who has castrated himself to cancel erotic desire; Amfortas, whose bleeding wound Klingsor inflicted when he stole the Holy Speer; Parsifal, who knows nothing of his history, not even his name. Most remarkably, the opera\u2019s sole female participant, Kundry, alternates between polar extremes of estrangement: when not deferentially tending the knights, she becomes a whore beholden to Klingsor\u2019s power mania. Willa Cather, a devoted Wagnerite, unforgettably called Kundry \u201ca summary of the history of womankind. [Wagner] sees in her an instrument of temptation, of salvation, and of service; but always an instrument, a thing driven and employed. . . . She cannot possibly be at peace with herself. . . . A driven creature, [she is] made for purposes eternally contradictory.\u201d The inspiration for this characterization was the soprano Olive Fremstad, the Callas of her day, and a personal acquaintance of Cather\u2019s. In the 1938 Met performance, the role of Kundry is lost on Kirsten Flagstad, who better knows Brunnhilde and Isolde.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1938, Wagner at the Met dominated the repertoire. No orchestra abroad possessed a more potent Wagner lineage. Absorbing the robust exaltation of the playing, one is amazed by the sheer expenditure of energy sustaining these four- and five-hour dramas. It would be simplistic merely to credit Bodanzky and his predecessors with powers of inspiration they doubtless possessed, or to cite the galvanizing singers with whom the players interact (in Parsifal, <\/em>the effortless precision with which everyone breathes together, even in passages of great deliberation, constitutes a master class in Wagner interpretation). Simply put: the works are known and loved. They are felt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Parsifal<\/em> maintained a special place. Jeffery McMillan, in the copious booklet inserted in Marston\u2019s Parsifal<\/em> CD box, recounts a four-decade history of Good Friday Parsifal<\/em> matinees at the Met beginning in 1907. Following the practice at Wagner\u2019s Bayreuth Festival,  applause and curtain calls were forbidden following the first and third acts. In a recent blog post<\/a> reviewing the Marston Parsifal<\/em>, Conrad L. Osborne \u2013 an unsurpassed chronicler of operatic performance in New York City beginning in the 1950s \u2013 writes of his own experience of \u201cthose Good Friday [Parsifal<\/em>] matinees, when the tradition was still in full force.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It was reverent and church-like, with the attention and obedient patience of the true believers setting (indeed, enforcing) the tone for everyone, even the skeptical and bewildered\u2014exactly as at a service. . . . That was a uniquely intense experience, magnified in Act 3 by the awareness that Good Friday reigned both inside and outside the theatre. Mostly inside, though, and the intensity was followed by a matchingly celebrative sense of relief and release upon discharge into the relatively fresh air and late-afternoon light of West 40th Street, with its oblivious semi-holiday passersby and lazy automotive traffic.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The subsequent fate of Wagner at the Met is unwittingly documented, in the 1938 Parsifal<\/em> broadcast, by a further Jewish participant arrived from abroad: the twenty-six-year-old Erich Leinsdorf. Bodanzky, increasingly infirm, relinquished his baton to Leinsdorf for act two, the shortest and most operatic of Parsifal\u2019<\/em>s three acts. In this cruel juxtaposition, Leinsdorf is no Bodanzky. The orchestra\u2019s impassioned weight of utterance is lifted. The singers are sometimes rushed. The elemental groundswell is absent. When upon Bodanzky\u2019s death in 1939 Edward Johnson, running the house, appointed Leinsdorf in his place, both Melchior and Flagstad threatened to quit. But Leinsdorf and Johnson prevailed. Ever after, the house\u2019s Wagner tradition lapsed and thinned. Beginning in the 1980s, Speight Jenkins\u2019 Seattle Opera eclipsed the Met as America\u2019s premiere Wagner venue. More recently, the Met\u2019s current Parsifal<\/em> production, new in 2013, was briefly redemptive. Its salvation was not the cast or director, but a master conductor \u2013 Daniele Gatti. Remounted five years later under the baton of Yannick Nezet-Seguin, the production failed to ignite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

                        ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The San Francisco Opera was founded in 1923 \u2013 forty years after the Met. It enjoyed a Wagnerian heyday in the 1970s under Kurt Herbert Adler, an Austrian\/American conductor and impresario who expanded the season to as many as 16 operas. For Wagner, Adler assembled the biggest names abroad, beginning with Birgit Nilsson. The orchestra was mediocre and at times under-rehearsed. In compensation, Adler landed a major conductor from East Germany: Otmar Suitner. The company was for many the city\u2019s cultural crown jewel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, the San Francisco Opera seems a shrunken remnant. The present season includes only six operas. Meanwhile, across the street, a San Francisco Symphony music director of high prestige, Esa-Pekka Salonen, in 2024 abruptly quit the orchestra when its board failed to back artistic initiatives he regarded as vital. The symphony\u2019s current repertoire, reversing course, is startlingly provincial. The opera, in comparison, is by no means without ambition. Its new Parsifal<\/em> comes on the heels of new Wagner productions \u2013 Lohengrin<\/em> and Tristan und Isolde<\/em> — the two seasons previous. The conductor of all three is the company\u2019s music director since 2021: Eun Sun Kim. A Wagner Ring<\/em> cycle is projected. In short: San Francisco is intent on taking Seattle\u2019s relinquished place as a West Coast Wagner mecca.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their Parsifal<\/em> is self-evidently a labor of love. Kim\u2019s interpretation is fluent and assiduously prepared. The orchestra of 77 players, while smallish for a 3,000-seat house, is superior to the Wagner orchestra Adler assembled. The chorus is sound. Of the principal singers, the Kundry \u2013 Tanja Ariane Baumgartner \u2013 is overmatched vocally and dramatically (most Kundrys are). Otherwise, the cast is shrewdly chosen. A pair of veteran Wagnerians \u2013 Kwangchui Youn and Falk Struckmann \u2013 sing Gurnemanz and Klingsor. Brandon Jovanovich\u2019s tenor, more plangent than heroic, commands sufficient heft to clinch Parsifal\u2019s climactic outbursts. Brian Mulligan is a lyric Amfortas. Though bigger voices \u2013 such as Melchior, List, Schorr, and Flagstad \u2013 could potentially have accommodated a reading of greater breadth and weight, the instruments at hand get the job done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That these singers participate as believers is a credit to the director, Matthew Ozawa. But he concludes with a fatal faux pas. Wagner here furnishes an enraptured ending perfectly mated with sonic radiance: \u201cA <\/em>beam of light: the Grail glows at its brightest. . . . Kundry slowly sinks lifeless to the ground in front of Parsifal, her eyes uplifted to him. Amfortas and Gurnemanz kneel in homage to Parsifal, who waves the Grail in blessing over the worshipful brotherhood of knights.\u201d Ozawa not only cancels Kundry\u2019s death \u2013 she partners Parsifal\u2019s possession of the cup. The result resembles a prosaic marriage tableau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A greater miscalculation is the engagement of a prominent choreographer, Rena Butler, to add dancers. When in 2019 the Met brought a new production of Gershwin\u2019s Porgy and Bess<\/em> from London to New York, someone noticed that a Black cast had been entrusted to a white director and white conductor. And so a Black choreographer, Camile A. Brown, was added to the show along with her company of African-American dancers. Their presence proved wholly superfluous and mildly obtrusive. In Parsifal<\/em>, Butler\u2019s dancers are wholly obtrusive. The first, introduced in act one, impersonates Parsifal\u2019s mother Herzeleide. When in act two Wagner strategically leaves Parsifal and Kundry alone on stage, the addition of Herzeleide as a mimed presence vitiates the opera\u2019s pivotal confrontation. Klingsor\u2019s Flower Maidens, who have just been banished from the premises, in Butler\u2019s rendering include men as well as women. And she repeatedly foregrounds a trio of red-clad dancers, two women and a man. When Klingsor hurls the Spear at Parsifal, it is they who guide its trajectory. When Amfortas raises the cup to end act one, the dancers interpose their gyrations. In the program book, Butler explains that she has drawn inspiration from \u201cthe restrained, poetic gestures of Noh, the visceral, soul-searching impulses of Butoh,\u201d and the \u201critual gestures found in Christianity . . . When these traditions intersect, they create an eclectic and abstract movement vocabulary that seeks to bridge the human and the divine. . . . The choreography invites audiences to experience Parsifal<\/em> as a collective ritual — immersed in wonder, reverence, and the possibility of transcendence.\u201d  I\u2019m not sure Wagner requires any help in this department. Butler also has a supplemental agenda: genderless choreography. I cannot, however, think of an opera more intent on exploring gender disparities than Parsifal<\/em>, with its celibate Knights, castrated villain, and Ur-feminine protagonist\/antagonist \u201csummarizing womankind.\u201d So extrinsic are Butler\u2019s dancers that their removal would leave no holes. It is only the corrupting ideological moment at hand that makes them seem essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though elderly, San Francisco\u2019s Parsifal<\/em> audience is robust and rapt, including (according to the company) a substantial proportion of newcomers. And subscriptions are up.  Jovanovich, in the program book, testifies that singing Parsifal makes him feel \u201ca better person.\u201d I am sure many in the house felt similarly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wagner endures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RELATED BLOGS:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Celebrating<\/em> Artur Bodanzky ‘s Wagner broadcasts: click <\/em>here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The San Francisco Symphony loses Esa-Pekka Salonen: click <\/em>here<\/a> and <\/em>here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Daniele Gatti conducts a magnificent “Parsifal” at the Met (2013): click <\/em>here for my Times Literary Supplement review.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yannick Nezet-Seguin takes over the Met “Parsifal” (2018): click <\/em>here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A superb Seattle Opera “Parsifal” (2003): click <\/em>here<\/a> (scroll down for my Times Literary Supplement review).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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