After Boris , this Parsifal is the other (for me) big race of the Regio . The exhibition - with some variations - is the one presented in 2007 to Sancarlo : directed by Federico Tiezzi and scenes of Guido Paolini .
The recovery of radio first of 26 left last truly sumptuous impression, which was fully confirmed by the representation of yesterday afternoon.
do not know how the adjective provide Kwangchul Youn , this was the absolute level reached by the lower nobility Korean who knows, perhaps it is his Eastern origins to allow him to dive so deeply in spirit (but also physically, from their hieratic Monaco Nepal) of the character of Gurnemanz and work. Simply great!
Christopher Ventris brought us here Parsifal directly from his Bethlehem Bayreuth, and the best gift we could not do: a gap in interpretation impeccable.
Christine Goerke has been an extraordinary Kundry : being able to literally change voice - not just the clothes - to bring its various incarnations is something reserved for only a few, and she is entitled to be counted in the ranks of those few.
Jochen Schmeckenbecher Amfortas is a more than decent, and besides, no one can pretend that everything and everyone is perfect. It is only (almost) perfection of the three players above that there does appear a tad bit below!
The sbifido Klingsor was Mark Doss Crowd favorite in Turin. Apply to him the considerations for Amfortas.
Navigator Kurt Rydl played his part, the short but challenging part of the old man Titurel (one who lives directly in a coffin, so as to facilitate the operations to His funeral, smile! )
I will not list in detail riders, grooms, flower girls, and voice from above. Not for him a rude (the poster is necessarily linked) but because cumulatively they join in a good! Together with several choirs led by Claudio Fenoglio , which has already firmly in hand the baton passed to it by Gull, flew to Rome.
Bertrand de Billy , unknown as a minimum, and even snubbed by some, has instead made my eyes look great. Meanwhile, because it takes time not exasperating (not touched the 4 hours) but at the same time not trying to emulate his compatriot in speed Boulez ( smile! ) Then it shows to be able to master this behemoth - and the ' that the orchestra should play - in a safe and authoritarian.
Responsible professors of course, that did not show even a smudge in the afternoon. Sound is always clean and discreet, which comes just as if from another world, never to drown the voices on stage. As the choirs of children and teens, singing offstage, leaving a thrilling effect.
A genuine triumph at the end of the proceedings, and an apotheosis at the end of work. Public to put it mildly delirious (too much, perhaps, how to quickly nell'applaudire).
The establishment of Tiezzi-Paolini (ably assisted by Giovanna Buzzi for costumes and Luigi Saccomandi for the lights) was not new, but confirmed the good things he had said and written after ' Neapolitan experience. No wishful thinking or fanciful Konzept , which adapt, perhaps distorting it, the original, but a vision - to me - absolutely secular of this masterpiece, all too often treated as a vernacular (excuse me the believers) sung mass.
intimate nature of Parsifal have given a thousand different interpretations, and each of us is entitled to prefer one or the other or the other yet. To me, that Parsifal is anything but a parody - or an apology, as he thought that oddly and wickedly Nietzsche - of Christian rites, or even Catholics, or a hymn to pietism and ingenuous volemmose-bbene ; is all out that an apology for a racist anti-Semitism, which is anything but a libel against homosexuality and prostitution. I believe (and I try to develop this tesi più compiutamente in appendice a questo post) che Parsifal ponga - in modo (per Wagner) definitivo - la questione del ruolo dell' Arte e dell' Artista all'interno dell'umana società, sempre più straniata fra una religione autoreferenziale e una scienza tracotante.
Ecco perché sono stato da subito piacevolmente colpito dall'ambientazione, che sembra indirizzarci verso questa prospettiva di fruizione del Parsifal: il sipario trasparente già ci introduce a geometrie e prospettive del pensiero (la curvatura dello spazio ?) e poi si solleva proprio su un luogo dove convivono Arte e Scienza (statues and books) at the home of Religion . And where companies are Parsifal immediately and visibly represented as works of an artist : the dying swan is literally framed , suggesting that the actions of Parsifal are, in fact, deeply artistic in nature (the flight I I take, what flies ).
agape at the end of the first act does not present us wine and bread, but ... tomes and the Grail is a structure consisting of three frames frame arranged to form an empty polyhedron , which carries within it the symbol of the time (a hourglass).
Science In the second act is presented as astronomy: first, Klingsor planets that stand out above, the time for him to awaken Kundry at the end as a galaxy or a star-dust, or supernova that takes the place of the castle, offset by the growing awareness of Parsifal. But even as primordial discovery of the four basic elements, which are represented on all four doors nested that frame the entrance to Kundry. Art appears in robes and graceful movements of the flower-maidens. And in colored veil with which Kundry, the muse (degenerate art, trying to smuggle the prostitution as maternal love) wraps Parsifal to lure into his trap.
In the third act, after the scene of 'Enchantment (essential, bright, exciting until the lump in my throat) we see first the Arts scarred, forgotten (pedestals without statues) or reduced to a pure sign (the columns drawn in the background) which is in contrast to the fallen Religious obscurantism: the knights who cover their eyes, even in a low light environment, and literally threaten Amfortas still empty because they repeat the liturgy. Then, the arrival of Parsifal, also returns the Arts (columns true that descend from above) and even science (books that would eventually reopen). Amfortas is literally self-piercing with the spear, just to kill, and finally exorcise, the obscurantist religion, while Kundry falls asleep leaning his head on her knees in a gesture of reconciliation exciting universal. And above all, the back light, the light of reason and art, which no longer feared, now that the Grail is found forever and for all.
So I have seen, heard and experienced that I Parsifal. Others have lived differently, and each for his good reasons. Now I try to explain mine.
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Appendice
Wagner era (soprattutto era convinto lui stesso di essere) un vero artista ; nella sua concezione, l' arte , quindi l'artista, è investito di una ben precisa missione : procurare all' Uomo adeguati e nobili strumenti di contrasto contro le sue ossessioni esistenziali .
Ludwig Feuerbach , con la cui filosofia Wagner aveva preso dimestichezza ai tempi di Dresda e della rivoluzione, e che poi studierà thoroughly - before encountering the capital figure of Schopenhauer - in the years of exile (during which - it should be remembered - will lay the foundation of all his future artistic output, already put the rest in the pipeline since 1845) allocate to ' Arts and potentially an equal role to that of the replacement Religion . According to the philosophy, religion is nothing if not inventive and the product of human imagination (which in turn made possible thanks to the intellectual faculties, unique prerogative of 'Animal Man ). The ability to rationalize the experience brought the man to see, along with to their great qualities and capacities, including their limitations and their weaknesses, the first of its mortality. At the same time the man took note that nature - along with many comforting sides - also has negative aspects, painful, disgusting and ultimately unbearable .
To escape this genuine obsession , Man has created the first gods, then God (which is the quintessence of the best human qualities idealized) and 'beyond , which represents the ideal of a perfect world, supernatural and metaphysical in which we can indeed dover credere: tutto un insieme di valori codificati dalla Religione , che ha fatto assurgere a sistema assoluto (in cui aver fede dogmaticamente) ciò che in realtà era sbocciato dall'immaginazione e dalla fantasia umane.
Immaginazione e fantasia che sono, anche, i motori della produzione artistica dell'Uomo. E l' Arte altro non è se non un diverso (dalla Religione) strumento che l'Uomo si è dato per combattere le sue ossessioni e l'insopportabile constatazione della propria mortalità; in definitiva, uno strumento di evasione dalla miseria della propria condition, and of spiritual elevation, in short, a secular religion .
Another consideration capital since the intellect enables man to explore, and more in depth, nature, matter (organic and inorganic) around him, but also his own identity and their own mind, here come the mortal danger to the Religion: to be contradicted by the achievements of the Company (via Science ) and lose all relevance, thereby depriving a man of that instrument self- consolation that he had so laboriously constructed, and precipitation, ultimately, in a state of icy, ghostly, and ultimately desperate condition.
religion and art are almost always go hand in hand: just think how much art has been inspired by religion and how religion has served the art to build its places of worship and to ennoble its liturgies. Unlike the relationship that he had with the Religious Science, a relationship often, though not always, conflict. It is interesting to analyze the relationship between Science and Art, where it turns out, for example perfectly in theme, the great affinity between the Science of Numbers el 'Arte sounds . No coincidence that Wagner was described by Thomas Mann, as the artist can poetizzare intellect ! And no Artist more and better than Wagner was able to have, and put into words and music - his plays - insights that will streamline and Science will frame much later: just think of psychoanalysis (Freud) and the theory of relativity (Einstein).
However, Wagner and Feuerbach interpreting (which devotes significantly in 1849, wrote his fundamental The Work of Art of the Future ) comes to the conclusion that - death fatally Religion under the blows of Company - the only instrument of salvation for man can not be that ' Arts. Question: Why the Arts, whose products are still, like religion, of human creativity and imagination, so outside of reality rationally experienced, can be accepted by the man (as a means of self-comforting) in place of Religion ? Simply because the Arts - a difference of religion - do not presume to dictate dogma, nor to reveal Truth (dogma and truth always less acceptable to the Company). The artistic product is presented for what it is, without masks, no tricks: indeed, as an invention of the human mind, designed to bring hope to Man not exist in an imaginary and metaphysical reality, but aesthetic pleasure and spiritual, to be consumed in the reality of our mortal existence, and in harmony with immanent nature. Indeed, art as a secular religion .
Well, the time of Wagner, with the religion that was first pilloried by the various Enlightenment, positivism, communism, atheism rampant in Europe, and the other it was increasingly becoming the parody of itself, slave of his own liturgy, what was the state of the art of artistic production (especially of the musical theater ) that religion should have a substitute? For Wagner: depressing and distressing. That his opinion, and more than that by objective findings, derived from his own inability to penetrate the ' establishment of that world (played by Paris ) that showed a decline it, the question is perhaps secondary. It is a fact that Wagner was seen and felt in charge of the mission of redeem (toh, who's here: Parsifal !) Art from those which were for him degeneration produced by magicians, sorcerers and alchemists (to Meyerbeer, so to speak ... or Klingsor ?) which, instead of giving the Man and the much-needed aesthetic pleasure and spiritual uplifting , he indulged the most vile and reprehensible attitudes, with products that had the sheer commodification (and prostitution, then) Art. Dual task, then, that Wagner is assigned to liberate man from religion, which expired a mere liturgy (the Grail regularly exposed just like a fetish to worship and used as pseudo-balm to heal the wounds resulting from the Man existential obsessions) and free art also degraded to vile and sinful commercialization (the castle of Klingsor ).
Here, all artistic production of Wagner (as early at least by ' Holländer), first in forms and approaches still not well codified and often contradictory (up to including Lohengrin ) but then in a clear, structured and planned, is nothing if not the run continues, relentless - we might say obsessive (!) - its self-imposed mission . Not only that, the dramas that make up Wagner gives form and content-class aesthetic, philosophical and spiritual (in fact making works of art in the highest sense); but the protagonists of his plays embody precisely his beliefs about the 'Arts and the struggle that the' Artist (the real and pure, with a capital A!) is called to bear in order to fulfill its mission . Mission is completed with Parsifal, as it happens. Where 's Artist Wagner, in the act of redeeming Religion and Art, also redeems himself ( Erlösung dem Erlöser ) from all sins, material, spiritual and artistic ... also, who committed along the stages of his missionary journey.
who meet in Parsifal?
Amfortas è il rappresentante, anzi il primo ministro, della Religione che, sentendosi minacciata dall'Arte, decide di combatterla. Ma l'Arte, che ai tempi di Monsalvat come di Wagner, è quella degenerata di Klingsor , lo seduce per tramite di Kundry , provocandogli una ferita insanabile: la perdita della Fede , in effetti. Ferita che la stessa Kundry – nelle sue reincarnazioni pietose (pietose, si badi bene, non compassionevoli !) – cerca invano di sanare.
Klingsor is a religious failure, unworthiness, which turns into a degenerate artist, and that the purity and spontaneity of fantasy and imagination have replaced the trick, magic, deception, self-castrated of all its natural potential. He wants to destroy religion, but not to replace it with the true art, but to impose her own art-religion depraved and corrupting. It is perhaps a case that the second act of Parsifal is plagiarized almost verbatim from third act of Robert le Diable ? It is the world degenerate (in the eyes of Wagner) of Meyerbeer, fragrant and full of false promises, what the 'pure Artist Wagner shows us - and with what sublime mastery - to let us despise and then to destroy it before our eyes, after which he, the artist, lightning has focused on the truth, that is the terrible deception behind the colors and scent of the sweet caresses of Klingsor and Kundry. (Something like that Wagner had done in the second act of Götterdämmerung, where we had shown admirably - with coarse choruses from grand opera - the breakdown of civilization Gibichungs, so worthy of being swept by fire and flood clean!)
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Kundry - in its re-incarnation serving Klingsor - is precisely the Muse artist. This explains why she knows all of Parsifal, even what he himself does not know himself. In the dramas of Wagner, there is always a female figure representing the Muse Artist (Wagner) mistreated and misunderstood. Often it is, unlike Kundry, a noble muse. As just one example, it is Brünnhilde against Siegfried, with this small add-on: the music sings Brünnhilde in Siegfried on the words Ewig war ich, ewig bin ich was originally written by Cosima Wagner to just become the his muse, in that Starnberg! But there is art as degenerate, so there is his muse and Kundry is one of them: after having mocked the religion (laughter of Christ on Calvary) was sold to Klingsor and is now forced to make her play, luring the enemies of his master. Manages to fall into the trap Amfortas and Parsifal, as Amfortas is blinded by religion, and as such unable (Wagner's eyes) to understand the reality and its devious instruments, while Parsifal is as ignorant as a oco , but - by true naive, and an authentic Artist touched by grace (autodipingeva as Wagner, for that matter) - can catch the deep essence of things and avert the danger of getting lost, even acquiring that knowledge which enables him to redeem humanity.
Parsifal is precisely the Artist (Wagner), in search of himself, his identity and his mission, he initially wandered about the world, meet the religion debased and corrupt, and that finally the art, just as it is about to fall, seduced by the siren song of false art, try compassion. Compassion for who? But for all men and women of the degraded victims of that false religion and art, fake instruments and abject self-comforting, well impersonated by the ceremony of 'Agape in first act, which is admirably liturgy religious , chop, sterilizing, magical and elusive. The naive Parsifal understands us anything, indeed the only thing I understand is that what must be a ambientino that damages your health , at least judging by the utterances of Amfortas.
These men and women can be redeemed if the true artist open their eyes on the truth and Nature ( Here, he gives thanks every creature, how many have flourished here and will die soon, because today the nature exonerate wins on the day of his innocence! ) The closing ceremony of the drama is actually a funeral, that of religion and its most illustrious minister ( Titurel ) followed by the triumph of knowledge and regained the spiritual elevation, the product of authentic artistic expression. Elevation that will perpetuate, once discovered Grail, it will leave open forever, as they sing the last words of Parsifal.
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