Have you ever heard of such a thing, rationing the number of times you can encounter Wagner's Parsifal? Well I have to, otherwise I might literally lose my head or die of cranial engorgement. You see, the thing is, I love the music way too much for stable mental health. At Bayreuth, Wagner's "home built" opera house, strange men in rain coats with greasy hair hang around before a show wearing pathetic signs round their necks saying, "please sell me a ticket". They are hooked, addicted, pathetic: in a way like Parsifal himself. The compassionate holy fool who restores Von Eschenbach's knights to their deeply spiritual encounters with the Holy Grail starts his journey in the guise of a naive oaf.
I have tried to analyse what it is about, say, the Act 1 interlude or the Good Friday music that lifts me into tantric ecstasy. In case you haven't got a clue what I am talking about, I am referring to the ultimate yogic tantric sex practice when you bypass sexual intercourse and instead literally "come" out of the top of your head! This Wagner fix for me is, I suspect, at least as powerful as heroin. I am told that substance makes sex pall into insignificance so you can see why I might be worried if I got hooked!
Yesterday at Covent Garden I heard the sweetest most manly Gurnemanz sung by Rene Pape, God what a voice, what a man, what subtle care of text. Then there was Tony Pappano moulding the dough of his orchestra into untold sensuality with his very bare hands, no baton here. The Parsifal was good vocally although my sassy companions were disturbed by his barrel tummy. Personally I prefer fat and a good technique rather than thin and flat of tone. The Kundry, Angela Denoke, is a mere slip of a woman. Her impressive middle voice was vastly "over-covered" and gripped in a steely controlled way: I was immediately suspicious as to how she would get her top notes. They were indeed a pitiful whimper which made a damp squib out of the climax of her salvation. Casting not up to snuff here. I have noticed of late a proclivity for thinness over good singing in the casting of lead women at Covent Garden.
Stephen Langridge's production above all things did allow the music to breathe and I admire him for taking that risk. The whole story is so loaded with Christianity, Masonry and outright wishful thinking that we can all become suckers for the unbelievable fairy tale. However I feel we miss a trick if we ignore the underbelly of the story, which is about what Jung called "Self Actualisation", i.e., becoming true to oneself. Kundry represents not "fallen women" but the ideal of rampant commercialism, fame and ego inflation. When Parsifal finally throws her off and redeems both of them Wagner is saying "look, we can live a more fulfilling life without all of that!"
As a composer I am impressed that Wagner created his own libretto because it gives him full autonomy to infuse his music with a marinated interpretation of the grail legend. Whatever your feeling may be about Wagner (appalling antisemitism) or the grail legends (religious bunkum) this music transcends itself. In his Parsifal Wagner literally finds his voice and in that deeply personal yet public act I am found too.
