Metropolitan Opera Archives

The eloquent and very impressive performance of Wagner's "Parsifal" yesterday afternoon in the Metropolitan Opera House held a numerous audience for long hours under its spell. Here is a music drama which is outside the present day and which violates most of the precepts of effective theatre. Its tempo is that of another age, or rather of another world. Generations of commentators have found fault with its confusion of philosophic elements and it demands much of the listener if he desires to penetrate very deeply into the intricate meanings of the text and the expressive symbols of the music. It is all beside the mark when the character and the genius of the work are felt as a whole. Perhaps no one of Wagner's creations is more debatable from certain points of view than this one and no one a more conclusive manifestation of the sovereign power of genius.

The performance was beautifully conceived and coordinated in its factors. Not only the tempi of the conductor, but the tempi on the stage were those demanded by music and situation. One might except a detail such as the quick marching of the boys in the cathedral scene, which some would find relief and logical contrast with the graver movements of the men, while others would consider this a disturbing rhythm. The performance in its entirety had a beauty and feeling that placed it among the highest achievements of the season.

The Parsifal of Mr. Melchior, studied at Bayreuth, is one of the Wagnerian parts which he understands most profoundly. Every meaning of the text is projected in the tone. Mme. Flagstad's Kundry has ripened and gained in fullness and significance of expression since last season, when it was already a remarkable achievement.

As Gurnemanz, Mr. List has provided grounds for astonishment on the part of his many admirers. Here and there he orates the text and clips his consonants. In general, and especially in the final scenes, he gives the whole character a gentleness and wisdom not often achieved. The magnificent voice can sound with a purely physical resonance; yesterday, in the Good Friday scene, it took on a luminousness, radiance and carrying power in soft passages which compassed the heights of the art of song. The whole tableau in this scene, and the contribution of each of its several exponents, with Mr. Bodanzky's exceptional treatment of the orchestra, became one of the great moments of the season.

Mr. Habich's Klingsor is not as dramatic as his Alberich, for example, of the "Ring." It is a little conventional, but is wholly in place, and, at least, suitable foil for the presences of Parsifal and Kundry. The smaller parts were admirably taken. Each knight and esquire gave his full measure of meaning, but without obtrusiveness and always with the conception of the scene as a whole. Fresh voices were heard in the scene of the flower maidens.

There were some slight changes in stage business, although in general the old and excellent action was adhered to. The custom at the Metropolitan of letting the curtain fall when Gurnemanz and Parsifal walk through the forest is actually much more effective than the Wagnerian direction which involves moving scenery. There is a finer picture, while the orchestra plays, in the imagination, and Wagner's orchestra bridges the distance from the forest glade to the halls of Montsalvat better than any theatrical device could do.

Final and comprehensive compliments of the occasion go to Mr. Bodanzky and his admirably prepared orchestra. The fusion and balance of tone, the expressiveness of individual passages as well as ensemble effect were a treat to the ear, but the quality of the tone was the vehicle of feeling which suffused the whole occasion. The audience was seized by this interpretation. Following tradition, there was no applause after the first and last acts, but enthusiasm made itself audible in unmistakable fashion after the Klingsor and Kundry scenes, when the soloists came before the curtain.

Review 2:

Lawrence Gilman in the Herald Tribune

The protagonists of Friday's performance left us in no doubt of the fact that they had been caught up into the work's essential moods. Mr. Melchior's Parsifal is now his finest achievement. He has grown extraordinarily in his mastery of its musical style since he first sang it at Bayreuth a decade or so ago. I have not heard him do anything more felicitous and just, in this or in another role, than his delivery Friday of the compassionate and exquisite phrases in which he addresses Kundry in the Good Friday scene after she has anointed his feet and dried them with her unbound hair; and again, as he baptizes her; and lastly, as he shows her the sweet peacefulness of the Spring woods and the meadows gleaming in the morning light.

Those moods, those accents, are not easily captured. The music here is of penetrating subtlety and tenderness and exaltation, of a beauty and significance which can easily be nullified by the slightest touch of crudity or false emotion. Mr. Melchior summoned the necessary mood, evoked the required beauty, with a delicacy and rightness beyond praise. One will not soon forget the tone and phrasing and enunciation of his ". . . an den Erlöser," and, afterward, of the indescribable "es lacht die Aue," in which Wagner has imprisoned a lacerating beauty that is not easily borne.

As for Mme. Flagstad, the quality of her unrivaled Kundry was made known to us last season, when she assumed the baffling role for the first time in her career. Flagstad's roles are being constantly enriched in beauty and significance from the seemingly inexhaustible store of this wonderful artist's inspired rectitude and comprehension; and her Kundry shares in that process.

It is superfluous to say again that the music has never been sung here as she sings it, nor the words of the text enunciated with the delicacy and depth of meaning which she gives to them. The single word, once repeated, which is the extent of her part in the Third Act, is required by Wagner to bear a weight and a power of extension which ask almost the impossible of Kundry's impersonator; yet as Flagstad uttered the syllables, they summed up what had gone before in the drama of spiritual conquest through submission, and what was to follow in the consummation of Wagner's luminous parable of renunciatory love. And the pantomime whereby she threw fresh lights and saliencies upon its meaning was even more telling than before: the desperate tragedy and beauty of the garden scene, the wordless eloquence of her tense inaction in the penitential scene, when Kundry lived for us that moment in which time became eternity.

The wise and compassionate Gurnemanz of Mr. List, Schorr’s Amfortas (he has never sung more movingly the prayer in the last scene), the heightened grace and animation of the Flower Maidens, the devotional intensity with which Bodanzky applied himself to the task of eliciting beauty and power and sublimity from his players – these were contributing elements of the highest value, and left us in possession, once again, of an immortal work and an experience that restores and validates our sense of the richnesss and greatness and worth of human living.

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