13895 Wagner News 174 - Wagner Society of England

It is easier still to buy the DVD of the Bayreuth Parsifal from 1998, produced by
Wolfgang Wagner, and conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli on the grandest, most expansive
scale. The sound and the performance of the music taken as a sound recording seem in
every way superior to the two recent CD sets, one already mentioned, by Gergiev, and the
other from Jaap van Zweden in Holland. This Dutch version has Klaus Florian Vogt as a
silvery, sensitive Parsifal, and Robert Holl as a veteran Gurnemanz, but it is vitiated by
strange balances with brass which are too distant for the climaxes. The limpid honey-flow
of the Parsifal textures does not include many climaxes but the few that there are are
fundamental to the architecture and really need to rock the foundations. Although the
dynamic range on Sinopoli’s DVD is not as expansive as is ideal, it is wide enough to
disclose the depth and quality of the performance. Sinopoli’s total belief in every last
second of the score and his inner animation in every phrase lays to rest to any hint of
torpor, such as marred his stodgy studio Tannhäuser on DGG or Levine’s equally stodgy
CDs from an earlier year of this same production.
This was the production where the stage was dominated by four great blocks of
metallic rock, vertical and multifaceted, and it also provided a moving Grail Scene and a
real Grail. Although Falk Struckmann was actually harder and more wobbly of tone on
this DVD than at Vienna, he almost dominates the work in virtue of an Amfortas that is
haunting in intensity, a mirror image of Christ but a failed image, but then he is equalled
by Hans Sotin’s momentous Gurnemanz, more powerful and masterful even than on the
Universal Classics DVD of Wolfgang Wagner’s earlier production. He also sings with real
inwardness at the crucial places, and his inner humility adds to the spirituality of the
whole experience. Linda Watson is a very personable Kundry, and her involvement with
the role makes it easier to overlook her unsettling vibrato, and the fact that she sings
slightly flat in the great scene between Kundry and Parsifal. Vocally Poul Elming as
Parsifal is no John Vickers or Jess Thomas, and he looks mature in close-up shots of his
face, but he sings very well in Act III, and is always pure-toned and musical. What is
more important is that as a total portrayal, Elming strikes me as the best Parsifal on DVD
and one of the best I have seen anywhere. He manages to convey the sense that his
willowy frame contains plenty of athletic and heroic potential, and he identifies totally
with the role. Indeed it possesses him. To give an idea of his quality, there is his Act II
transformation from rage and revulsion at Kundry because she tries to deflect him from
his mission after the big kiss from helping Amfortas into something quite different as
soon as she starts to tell him her story. He looks utterly haunted by her account of her
sufferings ever since her mocking of Christ on the way to his crucifixion, and Elming’s
superb acting makes it plain that he is now as desperate to help her as he is to help
Amfortas. He also makes it plain how he is prevented by her vituperative unwillingness
to accept this help his way, the right way. Like the diabetic who insists on masses of cream
and sugar instead of a sensible diet and insulin regime, she wants to do it her way, and
this is utterly counter-productive.
The whole experience of this DVD demonstrates how the sum is even greater than
the mostly excellent parts. Even watching it at home it was the most moving and uplifting
of all our Parsifal experiences over Easter, and even people who cannot afford to go to the
opera at Leipzig as I recommend (let alone Vienna) can probably rise to this wonderful
DVD from the C major record label. This Wolfgang Wagner production does not come at
the work from a tangent, but really is a “deed of music made visible.” And is there any
greater music in existence, or any greater artistic experience altogether, than Parsifal?
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