Whenever I Hear Wagner I Want To Invade Poland
PASCAL HARRIS reconsiders Parsifal, Wagner's ultimate opera, presented by an all-New Zealand cast in partnership with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra at the New Zealand International Arts Festival.
Parsifal, ‘A Sacred Festival Play’, is the last work and testament of Richard Wagner (1811-1883); in this score he achieved a luminosity which came with the assured mastery and relative repose of old age. Throughout the three acts Wagner’s portrayal of emotion is elevated on a different plane from ordinary existence. The agony and ecstasy of existence is present, imprinted in every bar of the music. But there is also a gentleness which is apparent in much of the outer acts, with the predominance of the flat keys of Ab and Db major. The pianist Sviatoslav Richter described the opening Prelude as ‘an expression of absolute and total truth,’ and in its serenity and expansiveness it takes the listener into an enchanted sound world which was to so influence Debussy among others. The second act is in contrast dark and tormented, with astonishing psychological depth a generation before Freud. Here the ‘holy fool’ Parsifal is faced with temptation in the form of a chorus of voluptuous ‘flower maidens’ and Kundry the ur-woman.
Wagner had been preoccupied with the idea of writing an opera dealing with religion for many years before he began to write Parsifal. Its planned precursors included the subjects of Jesus and Buddha. It was with this opera that Wagner famously alienated Nietzsche who felt betrayed by what he saw as Wagner’s capitulation to the falseness of Christianity. The mythic however continues to play a great part in Parsifal as in Wagner’s previous operas. Parsifal can be seen as another side of the Siegfried character of Wagner’s Ring cycle, the ‘noble savage’ who is guided purely by instincts and desires. Like Siegfried Parsifal has a kind of primal brutality about him. In the first act he kills a sacred swan, and in the second act he wounds the lovers of the flower-maidens. But whereas Siegfried affirms life and sexuality, Parsifal negates it. Through the awakening of the consciousness of pain and suffering he grows to accept and fulfill his role of ‘redeemer’.
Perhaps with Parsifal, Wagner, like Tolstoy, was trying to purge the vestige of sexuality which still remained in him and religious aspect of this work can put some people off; but like the Bach Passions it is not necessary to have any religious beliefs to be deeply moved by these monuments to faith. Like the Bach Passions, one feels reluctant to clap at the end of each act, to disrupt the atmosphere of solemnity; and Wagner actually proclaimed a wish that there be no applause until the very end of the work. Wagner also regarded Parsifal as so sacred that it was only to be staged at the consecrated platform of Bayreuth, and after his death his widow Cosima continued to restrict productions elsewhere for thirty years. One wonders what Wagner would have thought of a performance in the remote islands of New Zealand!
» Parsifal @ NZ International Arts Festival
Parsifal, ‘A Sacred Festival Play’, is the last work and testament of Richard Wagner (1811-1883); in this score he achieved a luminosity which came with the assured mastery and relative repose of old age. Throughout the three acts Wagner’s portrayal of emotion is elevated on a different plane from ordinary existence. The agony and ecstasy of existence is present, imprinted in every bar of the music. But there is also a gentleness which is apparent in much of the outer acts, with the predominance of the flat keys of Ab and Db major. The pianist Sviatoslav Richter described the opening Prelude as ‘an expression of absolute and total truth,’ and in its serenity and expansiveness it takes the listener into an enchanted sound world which was to so influence Debussy among others. The second act is in contrast dark and tormented, with astonishing psychological depth a generation before Freud. Here the ‘holy fool’ Parsifal is faced with temptation in the form of a chorus of voluptuous ‘flower maidens’ and Kundry the ur-woman.
Wagner had been preoccupied with the idea of writing an opera dealing with religion for many years before he began to write Parsifal. Its planned precursors included the subjects of Jesus and Buddha. It was with this opera that Wagner famously alienated Nietzsche who felt betrayed by what he saw as Wagner’s capitulation to the falseness of Christianity. The mythic however continues to play a great part in Parsifal as in Wagner’s previous operas. Parsifal can be seen as another side of the Siegfried character of Wagner’s Ring cycle, the ‘noble savage’ who is guided purely by instincts and desires. Like Siegfried Parsifal has a kind of primal brutality about him. In the first act he kills a sacred swan, and in the second act he wounds the lovers of the flower-maidens. But whereas Siegfried affirms life and sexuality, Parsifal negates it. Through the awakening of the consciousness of pain and suffering he grows to accept and fulfill his role of ‘redeemer’.
Perhaps with Parsifal, Wagner, like Tolstoy, was trying to purge the vestige of sexuality which still remained in him and religious aspect of this work can put some people off; but like the Bach Passions it is not necessary to have any religious beliefs to be deeply moved by these monuments to faith. Like the Bach Passions, one feels reluctant to clap at the end of each act, to disrupt the atmosphere of solemnity; and Wagner actually proclaimed a wish that there be no applause until the very end of the work. Wagner also regarded Parsifal as so sacred that it was only to be staged at the consecrated platform of Bayreuth, and after his death his widow Cosima continued to restrict productions elsewhere for thirty years. One wonders what Wagner would have thought of a performance in the remote islands of New Zealand!
» Parsifal @ NZ International Arts Festival
Parsifal was Wagner’s last and many say most accomplished opera, the culmination of the development of the emotional intensity of the German Romantic movement. Containing some of the most ethereal and subtle music Wagner ever composed, Parsifal is an allegory on the conflict between Christianity and paganism, good and evil, physical passion and spiritual purity....[Read More]
