Opera North’s Wagner journey, which began with the Ring cycle it presented between 2011 and 2014, continues with his final music drama. Unlike the previous instalments, though, Parsifal is presented not in Leeds Town Hall (currently being refurbished) but in the company’s home theatre, so that the staging is more elaborate than before; on tour it will be presented as a more straightforward concert staging.
As before, though, Opera North’s orchestra, conducted again by its former music director Richard Farnes, takes centre stage. Literally, in this case, as it fills the space of the Grand theatre, with the drama played out in front and sometimes behind it, and spilling into the auditorium for the choral set pieces. As one of the greatest glories of Wagner’s score is its extraordinary orchestral writing, that is no disadvantage at all, and Farnes’ control and shaping of four hours of music is as sure as ever. To those reared on Hans Knappertsbusch’s classic Parsifal recordings, his tempi may sometimes seem rather brisk, and there is perhaps more intense beauty to be wrung out of the third-act prelude than there was here, but in general the shimmering poetry of the score is wonderfully conveyed.
There is no set, just an array of lights at the back of the stage creating different patterns and effects. Costumes (by Stephen Rodwell) are unspecifically modern – grey hoodies for Gurnemanz and the grail knights, quasi-military uniforms for Titurel and Klingsor. For the most part, too, Sam Brown’s production sticks to the basic narrative, and only diverges significantly towards the ends of the first and third acts. If his gloss on the final scene of Act One, having the grail knights smear themselves with the blood seeping from Amfortas’s wound, is reasonable enough, the image he conjures for the end of the opera introduces a jarring sense of kitsch: it is not the grail that is unveiled, but a baby, held aloft by Kundry, who is clad in Madonna blue.
Musically, though, the performance, built on the foundation of Farnes and the orchestra, never puts a foot wrong. It’s dominated by Brindley Sherratt as Gurnemanz, whose every word of his first-act narration is crystal-clear and compelling. Robert Hayward is an anguished Amfortas and Derek Welton an implacable Klingsor, and while Toby Spence’s Parsifal may not be the most heroic ever heard, he is interestingly self-aware, visibly bothered by what he does not understand of the grail ritual; that is until the third act, when Brown has him and Katerina Karnéus’s previously rather sisterly Kundry smirking at each other like soppy teenagers. In the scheme of things, though, these are minor irritations; the glory of Wagner’s score shines through.
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