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Dance In Its Place

"Parsifal"
The Kirov Opera & Orchestra of the Maryinsky Theater
Opera House, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC, USA
February 21, 2006

 
by George Jackson
copyright ©2006 by George Jackson

The impression that Richard Wagner was a composer and dramatist insensitive to dance is incorrect. Wagner was too much a man of the theater to ignore something as fundamental as the human body in motion. Two of his operas in repertory, "Rienzi" and "Tannhaüser", include out-and-out ballet divertissements. The 8 other stage works have music meant for less virtuosic dance or for such ceremonial movement as parading and marching. Indications in all 10 works considered "standard Wagner" are that their author also was far from indifferent to the way the singers and supers maneuvered. For him, choreography had its place even if it was of subsidiary importance. Staging these operas is often assigned to choreographers, beginning in Wagner's own lifetime when August Bournonville was charged with the Copenhagen productions. In Paris, it was Lucien Petipa who choreographed the "Les Graces" ballet in "Tannhaüer" that caused a rumpus because it came too early in the evening to suit the late arrivers of the Jockey Club. Diaghilev, in the seasons when he and his Ballets Russes serviced the Monte Carlo Opera's  productions, asked George Balanchine to set the dances for "Tannhaüser" and "Meistersinger", which Balanchine did again later for New York's Metropolitan Opera. The list of choreographers from both ballet and modern dance who have worked at Bayreuth's Wagner Festival is staggering. Moreover, Wagner offered to compose an entire ballet for the charming Italian dancer Claudia Cucchi, although that was, perhaps, just gallantry. In all, Wagner may not have written as much ballet music as Verdi, but just compare him to Puccini!

"Parsifal", Wagner's last opera, has been call a spectacle of faith, but haven't religion and theatricality been bedfellows forever? Much about "Parsifal" is ponderous. Its pace is slow, its characters navigate with ballast. Particularly the character who occupies so much of the opera's time, Gurnemanz, is a stage director's nightmare. Gurnemanz is not the hero, nor the failed hero, nor the villain but the narrator thinly disguised as a sidekick to the main actors. He's old and repeats himself endlessly. This figure threatens to undo Wagner's renown as a dramatist. Other key characters—Parsifal, Amfortas, Klingsor—are painted in bold strokes. The plot's only female principal, Kundry, groveling like an abused hound and presenting like a cat in heat, is an amazing amalgam. But until almost the end, the focus keeps returning to dead-weight Gurnemanz. Tony Palmer's staging for the Maryinsky sometimes makes a virtue of Gurnemanz and other unwieldiness in this opera by treating the characters as larger than life and moving them as though they lived on a planet of high gravity. The result, though uneven, worked more often than not. Gennady Bezzubenkov did moderately well being teacherly wise in the Gurnemanz role. Oleg Balashov was a fortunate choice for the title part. He's tall, big boned and an actor who made Parsifal's behavior as the perfect fool seem plausibly blunt, never silly. Evgeny Nikitin, the seduced and wounded Amfortas, suffered his pain throughout the opera in diverse, varied ways to avoid monotony. Nikolai Putilin projected Klingsor—perpetually unsatisfied, sexually self-mutilated, the quintessential self-loather—as an unctuous warp. Larissa Gogolevskaya, the Kundry, seemed the one principal who wasn't a natural actor. Yet she forged ahead with her squat, rotund form and unabashed Wagnerian voice to make her troubled character's suffering and desire searing.

This "Parsifal" looked as if it took place in semibarbaric Russia rather than medieval Spain, especially the Church of the Holy Grail (sets by Yevgeny Lysyk) with its luminous icon screens and the furry, Boyaresque apparel for the Knights of the Grail (costumes by Nadezhda Pavlova). Lighting (by Vladimir Lukasevich) kept transforming the church and Klingsor's garden but was surprisingly flat during the Good Friday Spell, perhaps discouraged by Gurnemanz's presence. Frank Rizzo's supertitles helped with Wagner's message that what enabled the perfect fool to resist temptation and heal suffering was his constant awareness of and compassion for Amfortas' pain. Temptation is first made visible on stage by Klingsor's Flower Maidens. They were dressed colorfully, a little like flappers and tulip bulbs. They not only sing but danced minimally, torsos undulating gently, raised arms waving softly, forming circles but not propelling into a true round dance because that might seem strenuous and dispel their soporific allure.   

Musically this was a superb "Parsifal". It was richly and with nuance that the Kirov Orchestra took to the varieties of longing in the orchestral writing (mostly by Wagner, but he asked Engelbert Humperdink to supply additional scene changing music when that need turned up). Despite the Flower Maidens and despite Kundry's seductive aspect in Act 2, this is an opera for male voices—principals, subsidiary singers, choruses (the Kirov's men and the Maryland Boy Choir positioned in balconies so that the audience was surrounded by sound). Valery Gergiev's conducting resisted rushing the long work even when Gurnemanz held forth. Building Wagner's culminations plushly, Gergiev proved himself capable of making time, sound and substance become one.   

Volume 4, No. 8
February 27, 2006
copyright ©2006 George Jackson
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last updated on February 27, 2006