It is a minor shame that the tremendous San Francisco staging of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal, currently running at the War Memorial Opera House, had but one Sunday matinee performance. I can’t answer the long-running question about Parsifal being a Christian opera or not, but seeing it this past Sunday returned me to those long hours of my religious upbringing, spent in pews and listening to sermons on compassion, suffering and redemption.
At church, as a child, I couldn’t have been more bored. At the opera house, watching this marvelous production unfold over the course of five hours, I couldn’t have been more transfixed. Under the direction of Matthew Ozawa, whether you’re a diehard Wagnerite or a casual operagoer, this production of Parsifal is something special; an experience that’ll stop you dead in your tracks.
The storyline is simple enough. Parsifal, a wide-eyed fool (played expertly by Brandon Jovanovich), encounters the knights of the Holy Grail and finds King Amfortas (a perfectly anguished Brian Mulligan) suffering. Amfortas’ wound has refused to heal after the outlaw Klingsor (a booming Falk Struckmann) stabbed him with the Holy Spear, which he stole when the temptress Kundry (a beguiling Tanja Ariane Baumgartner) seduced Amfortas.
Creative use of fog makes Act II a feast for the eyes, along with a parade of nearly three dozen flowermaidens, all vying for Parsifal’s affections. When Kundry tempts Parsifal, he is transformed into a compassionate deep thinker who recovers the spear from Klingsor but is cursed by Kundry to wander, hopelessly, for years.
Parsifal is often characterized as a marathon. But more than four hours in, I didn’t count any newly empty seats around me at the start of Act III, when the welcome return on stage of the knight Gurnemanz (an exceptional Kwangchul Youn) set off the riveting finale in the sanctuary of the Holy Grail.
