Parsifal, Berlin Staatsoper, Schiller Theater, Berlin, review: 'thrilling'

This new production of Wagner's opera, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, was commanding and radical, says Mark Ronan

Staatsoper Berlin's bold, new producton of 'Parsifal', conducted by Daniel Barenboim

Wagner’s Parsifal is about redemption and renewal, but this new production by Russian director Dmitri Tcherniakov adds a jarring note — revenge. Those who saw his Simon Boccanegra for the English National Opera, where Amelia refuses to embrace her dying father, may not be surprised – but I was.

In Wagner’s conception, Kundry dies in the last moments, her sins redeemed by Parsifal, but in Tcherniakov’s interpretation she gets a knife in the back from the kindly old knight Gurnemanz.

This is a director long on ideas, and Act I was sublime. Daniel Barenboim in the pit and René Pape as a superb Gurnemanz gave the music, singing and staging a thrilling coherence. There was effortless simplicity in the journey to the Grail, where “space becomes time”, and Titurel entered and exited in a dual state: in a coffin, yet also tall and commanding in a black leather coat.

The Grail itself, a chalice filled with holy water and blood from the wound of Amfortas, provided glorious renewal as the knights drank from it — a sort of reverse transubstantiation.

In Act III emotions were palpable. Gurnemanz almost collapses after anointing Parsifal, and the deathless knights – bearded and unkempt, like the Flying Dutchman’s ghostly crew – form a melee around Amfortas. Parsifal and the spear bring redemption and renewal, so why is Kundry murdered?

Andreas Schager in the title role (with Anja Kampe) in 'Parsifal' in Berlin
Andreas Schager in the title role (with Anja Kampe) in 'Parsifal' in Berlin

Andreas Schager in the title role, with Anja Kampe as Kundry, in 'Parsifal' in Berlin

The key was the much-booed Act II. The sorcerer Klingsor is no fallen knight, but a nervous Josef Fritzl-like character who keeps his family of girls (some as young as five or six) confined from the world, while Kundry as his wife can come and go at will. Yet he is no match for Parsifal, who uses the spear to kill him, as blood splatters back into his face.

Perhaps the man’s evil lives on in Act III, when at the point of redemption, Kundry grasps Amfortas in a carnal embrace, and Gurnemanz suddenly understands depths hitherto unseen. Entering from the shadows, he takes her life.

Too clever by half, but Tcherniakov’s set fitted his conception, with a mix of time periods in Acts I and III, and white antiseptic splendour for the hidden world of Act II.

There was superb singing from Andreas Schager (Parsifal), Matthias Hölle (Titurel) and Wolfgang Koch (Amfortas) – plus a huge embrace from Tcherniakov for Anja Kampe, whose beautifully nuanced performance of Kundry was the centrepiece of his production, accomplished despite her suffering from flu.