the sacred and the profane
by Douglas Messerli
Richard
Wagner (libretto and music) Parsifal /
HD live Metropolitan Opera production, New York, March 2, 2013
Even more strangely, although the community seems to espouse a gentle
pacifist creed in its
isolated mountain habitat, their major
activity, it appears, has been one of militancy, as they respond to fellow
believers in struggle throughout the world (a
nod to the activities of The Crusades), during which the haggard Kundry serves
as a willing messenger in an attempt to atone for her former life. Indeed, when
the dimwitted Parsifal stumbles upon their retreat, killing a swan that has
risen up over the nearby lake where Amfortas is bathing to comfort his pain,
the noble Gurnemanz chastises the “fool” for his militant behavior. This
seeming contradiction is just one of many in an opera that anyone might
describe as “jumbled.”
It is no wonder, accordingly, that despite its beautiful score, Parsifal has been met with a volley of
sometimes outrageous criticisms, including attacks on its militarism and
monasticism and Hartmut Zelinsky’s accusation of it as being a “millenarianist
fantasy about the redemption of an Aryan Jesus from Judaism,” a feeling, in a
milder form, expressed by our friend.
Of course, it is this very mix of elements—the “jumble” of which I
speak—that also helps to make this opera an intense allegory that seems to have
numerous possibilities in its reading. In his suffering condition, the sinful
believer Amfortas is like Christ, is himself a kind of Christ who, as Christ
himself did, temporarily loses his way. The innocent and foolish Parsifal is
sent off by Gurnemanz for his inability to comprehend the service he has just
witnessed; but this fool is also the future savior who will have to undergo his
own spiritual journey to come into wisdom, awakened into action by the kiss of
Kundry and catapulted into heroism by grabbing the holy spear from the demonic
Klingsor. But even then, it will take years of painful wandering and suffering
for him to find his way back to the congregation with the new knowledge that he
must take over its leadership.
If Amfortas is Christ, Klingsor, as a kind of bloody-haired Lucifer,
suffers equally in his chaste greed. Before Parsifal can come into any awareness
he too must be bloodied, just like Amfortas, and feel the strong pull of lustful
love, leaving his heart open to pangs similar to those the leader must daily
suffer. Parsifal’s strange salvation comes, accordingly, from the lips of
Kundry, who, in her lust awakens the young hero only to tell him the truths of
his father and mother and their love for him and each other. When Parsifal
rejects her embraces, she is compelled to tell him of her own need for
salvation by confessing that, having laughed at Christ while he hung upon the
cross, she has been damned through several life-times to laugh and jeer at
everything around her; she is unable to weep—and, most importantly, is unable
to die.
Through much of the director’s and designer’s strong images and staging
methods, we come to understand Wagner’s deeply embroidered tale far more
clearly. Yet, in my opinion, Girard has further distanced us from these
tortured knights by turning them into contemporary beings, who, in symbolic
gesture of their abstinence, spend the first moments of the opera ridding
themselves of ties, coats, shoes, socks, wristwatches and other articles of
apparel to be clad only in white shirts and pants. The leader, Amfortas, has
even given up his belt. By placing these men in a tight circle (perhaps to
remind us that they present “a round table”) as they move, with Busby Berkeley-
precision, their hands, heads, torsos in various choreographed positions, they
seem more like some strange religious contemporary cult members than worldly
knights. I can well understand the director’s determination to rid Wagner’s
work of the clanging armor, swords, and helmets of more traditional
productions, in order to emphasize these figures’ relationships to us. But by clothing
them so indistinguishably and asking them to perform in such ritual precision,
Girard even further dissociates them from those in the audience who do not
share the intense religious devotions of these men—which includes almost all of
us.
Finally, Wagner himself, in telling his story, has drained out much of
the empathy we might feel for his characters. Except for the remarkable duet
between Kundry and Parsifal in Act II, most of his story is told in retrospect,
in long narrative recitations by Gurnemanz, Kundry, and others. We know that
Amfortas suffers, but, except for glimpses, we comprehend it only in
retrospect; we realize that Parsifal awakens from his foolishness into wisdom
and empathy through his long pilgrimage, but we are not permitted to witness
it. It is as if everything that happens of importance in this opera was kept
out of sight. Surely, Wagner’s penchant for retelling “story” is present in
nearly all of his works, but in Parsifal it
is the very substance of the piece, which makes us feel a
void when it comes to its dramatic heart. Although clothed in the beautiful
sensuality of its music, it is a work that feels cold and steely at its center.
At one moment, as Gurnemanz recounts the joys and beauties of Good Friday, the
ominous blacks and grays of the set momentarily opened up into a partially blue
sky—a moment of intense relief—before being overtaken once more by the black
and gray landscape that dominates this great work of art. Even with Parsifal’s
healing of Amfortas and his rejoinder of the blood of Christ upon the Spear
with that of the Grail, performed almost as a sexual act when the spear is dipped
into the circular vessel, we are left still with a quite bleak statement of
life. If this is what a spiritual vision demands, I would prefer to remain in
the pagan palace to sinfully witness this work of art.
March
3, 2013
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