Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Parsifal, Theater Freiberg
Hall of mirrors … Theater Freiberg's Parsifal.
Hall of mirrors … Theater Freiberg's Parsifal.

Parsifal review – a real and rare company achievement, without stars

This article is more than 9 years old
Norwich Theatre Royal
Theater Freiberg's production of Wagner's Parsifal may not have great radiance, but it is impressively efficient

Seventeen years ago, the Theatre Royal in Norwich became a place of pilgrimage for Wagnerians when the Norwegian National Opera presented its Ring cycle there for a brief season. Now the theatre is playing host once more to Wagner from across the North Sea, with two recent productions from Theater Freiburg – a Parsifal first seen last year, and a Tannhäuser that was new five months ago. Freiburg is not one of the leading German opera houses, but the quality of the Parsifal is a measure of the strength of opera there; it's a show that almost any British company would be happy to have in its repertory.

Frank Hilbrich's production sets out its stall in the opening moments of the prelude, when the curtain rises on a pair of renaissance paintings being devoured by flames: one is of a madonna and child, the other, Christ on the cross. What follows, that suggests, takes place in a post-Christian, post-apocalyptic age, in the ruins of a 21st-century society without the safety-net of belief.

It's hard to define what this community is, though – perhaps a sanatorium, perhaps a psychiatric hospital, in which the lucid matter-of-fact Gurnemanz (Frank van Hove and his fellow grail knights, all of a certain age, are the staff. There's a lot of surface detail, especially in the first act, some of it more distracting than illuminating, with constant comings and goings through the empty picture frames of Volker Thiele's set; as Gurnemanz takes Parsifal (Roberto Gionfriddo) to watch the attempt by Amfortas (Juan Orozco) to unveil the grail, he shows him video footage of the horrors and atrocities of the modern world – bombings, executions and starvation.

The castle of Neal Schwantes's Klingsor is a hall of mirrors, his flower-maidens a monoculture in Lurex and pink, one of whom virtually presents Parsifal with the spear at the end of the act, while Sigrun Schell's Kundry looks on. Kundry is a constant presence, by turns mocking, snarling and coquettish, and a bit too ubiquitous by the end of the opera, but Schell is a wonderfully committed performer who gives the role everything, dramatically and vocally.

The whole cast, in fact, is much more than adequate. Every performance is secure; it's a company achievement, without stars, of the kind we rarely get to hear in Britain. The foundation is Fabrice Bollon's conducting, a measured unfolding of the vast score, played with unwavering concentration by the Philharmonic Orchestra of Freiburg; this may not be a Parsifal of great radiance or transcendence, but it's an impressively efficient one.

Theater Freiberg's Tannhäuser is on 27 July, 3pm, and 28 July, 5pm. Box office: 01603 630000. Venue: Theatre Royal, Norwich.

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed