{"id":935,"date":"2018-02-11T18:08:23","date_gmt":"2018-02-11T23:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=935"},"modified":"2018-02-11T18:08:23","modified_gmt":"2018-02-11T23:08:23","slug":"yannicks-hollow-parsifal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2018\/02\/yannicks-hollow-parsifal.html","title":{"rendered":"Yannick\u2019s Hollow Parsifal"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Photo by Marco Borggreve<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The highwater mark for Wagner at the Metropolitan Opera in recent decades was the 2013 <\/a>Parsifal,<\/em> handsomely directed and strongly cast. The crucial ingredient, however, was Daniele Gatti\u2019s leadership in the pit.<\/p>\n

The Francois Girard\u2019s production has now returned, led by Yannick Nezet-Seguin. As he is the company\u2019s new music director, comparisons to Gatti are inescapable.<\/p>\n

The Nezet-Seguin Parsifal, alas, is slack and shapeless during the opera\u2019s long outer acts. All the virtues of Gatti\u2019s reading \u2013 the tensile line, the depth of tone, the moment-to-moment creative investment in the drama \u2013 are missing.<\/p>\n

Amfortas\u2019s first act monologue, heretofore a revelation, fails to build though the singer is the same. His elevation of the grail \u2013 invested by the composer with miracles of shimmering color and texture \u2013 is inadequately prepared or supported. The brisk tempo for the ensuing chorus comes out of nowhere. The act\u2019s closing measures, in which the orchestra must move swiftly from aching pathos to consternation to beatitude, sounds like a first try, not a finished product.<\/p>\n

With the sound of Gatti\u2019s act three prelude fresh in the ear \u2013 he just performed it<\/a> at Carnegie Hall with his Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra \u2013 Nezet-Seguin\u2019s rendition sounded glibly dramatic; Wagner\u2019s intended malaise of body and spirit, conveyed by Gatti with heaving oceanic accents, was wholly absent. The Good Friday music lacked an arc. The sustained sub-current of high feeling that wonderfully anchors this particular opera, governing its mood and trajectory, remained undetectable. The long evening felt rudderless. Hollow.<\/p>\n

Act two was much better. \u201cThis fellow needs action,\u201d said my wife \u2013 a plausible inference. Here a wide play of tempo \u2013 including a daringly prolonged silence after Kundry\u2019s expostulation \u201clachte!\u201d \u2013 aligned with the events at hand. Evelyn Herlitzius, possessor of a monochromatic soprano of good size, vividly projected the vicissitudes of Kundry\u2019s attempted seduction.<\/p>\n

I wish I could be more positive about the conscientiously crafted Parsifal of Klaus Florian Vogt. \u00a0He nowadays also sings Tannhauser, Lohengrin, and Walther von Stolzing in the world\u2019s major houses \u2013 but with an instrument unlike any Wagner tenor I have previousy encountered: clear and piercing, with a vinegar timbre. Its tight focus insures audibility. The words are distinctly conveyed. But absent heft and tonal beauty, every big moment, lyric or dramatic, is squandered. My first Met Parsifal, in 1966, was Sandor Konya \u2013 today not even a name. In act two, he fell to his knees, opened his arms, and poured it on: “Erloser! Rette mich!” Thirteen years after that we had Jon Vickers: prodigious. Never since, to my knowledge, has this role been cast in New York with a voice of sufficient size.<\/p>\n

Rene Pape and Peter Mattei repeat their assignments of five seasons ago. Pape has long and deservedly owned Gurnemanz \u2013 but the luster and stamina of his bass are now fading. Mattei\u2019s big set pieces suffer from insufficient shaping in the pit. And, sitting in the Family Circle, I missed the revelatory facial and gestural detail he presumably still brings to Amfortas.<\/p>\n

As it happens, for the first time in over forty years I was denied tickets by the Met press office. Whether this had anything to do with my recent posting about James Levine<\/a> I have no idea. Certainly I have written more about Wagner at the Met than any other living human being. No matter, my $37 seat in row H was a bargain: the sound upstairs is superb, better than downstairs up front.<\/p>\n

Girard\u2019s production looks handsome from afar \u2013 but I find that I no longer tolerate his dramatization of the act one and three Preludes, or the superfluity of so many women onstage during act one. What he\u2019s driving at is sufficiently conveyed when Kundry, rather than Parsifal, first lifts the cup at the close. I still find this interpolation exceptionally moving.<\/p>\n

The performance (I attended Saturday night) ignited a lusty ovation that peaked when Nezet-Seguin took the stage \u2013 and suddenly ended. A response to received opinion.<\/p>\n

Our new music director is not yet 45 year old. Whether he grows into the big Wagner works remains to be seen. But I fear that, with the disappearance of Levine, a new cult may already be upon us. Please, Tony Tommasini \u2013 not so fast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The highwater mark for Wagner at the Metropolitan Opera in recent decades was the 2013 Parsifal, handsomely directed and strongly cast. The crucial ingredient, however, was Daniele Gatti\u2019s leadership in the pit. The Francois Girard\u2019s production has now returned, led by Yannick Nezet-Seguin. As he is the company\u2019s new music director, comparisons to Gatti are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-f5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=935"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":942,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions\/942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}