Metropolitan Opera Archives

Parsifal received five performances this season.
Although not credited in program, Violeta Urmana sang the off-stage voice.

Review 1:

Justin Davidson in Newsday
An Ever-Faithful and Fanciful “Parsifal”

Wagner’s sacramental pageant "Parsifal" returned to the Metropolitan Opera Thursday night, musically radiant, dramatically dubious and as capable as ever of holding thousands in a six-hour thrall.

As with heaven itself, the opera's promise of uneventful eternity has not dissuaded the faithful. "Parsifal" attracts a reverential crowd, which bought every ticket for all five performances and on Thursday angrily shushed those few unsuspecting outsiders who violated custom by clapping at the end of the first Holy Grail scene. A performance of "Parsifal" is an act of worship, not mere entertainment.

In the face of all this organized rapture, the outsider becomes a skeptic whose reservations harden into resistance. Allow yourself to become distracted by the story's baffling ellipses, by the statuesque inertness of the people on stage, by the hokey, Addams Family gloom of Gunther Schneider-Siemssen's sets, by the kitschy Holy Grail that shines from inside like an electrified punch bowl, by the comical undulations of a gang of randy Flower Maidens — let laughter have a toehold, and the spell dissolves. Giving oneself to "Parsifal" means suppressing the rational faculties. Yes, the weathered and beefy Placido Domingo, who sang the title role, strains credulity as the pure and callow boy-hero, but then the whole opera is about having faith in the improbable.

The Met, however, made exaltation an easy option. James Levine's conducting brought out the score's atmospheric lightness — its eddies of melody and beams of sacramental harmony, its gusts of dissonant unrest. (Levine also picked up his usually stately tempos just enough to bring the curtain down 20 minutes earlier than he has in the past.) Domingo, late in his career, has ripened into a masterful Wagnerian, and he lavished on Parsifal his cognac-mellow, baritonal tenor and his elegant way with a phrase. One would never know from hearing him how coarse and hollered this role can sound, and if Domingo's ease often comes off as indifference, on open*ing night he sang with genuine elan.

Domingo is always at his most compelling when he finds himself alone onstage with a congenial soprano, and in the extended Act II duet with Kundry, he clicked with the formidable Violeta Urmana. Urmana, who was making her Met debut, never quailed at her mercurial role and sang with the supple strength of tempered steel.

The rest of the cast helped support the opera's cathedral-like span. Hans-Joachim Ketelsen moaned mightily as the wounded king Amfortas. John Tomlinson, who introduced the whole plot in Gurnemanz's daunting prologue, gave heft and nobility, though not clarity, to a mystifying narration. Ekkehard Wlaschiha, as the ancient evil sorcerer Klingsor, sounded as though he had had better days — but then, so has Klingsor. The chorus, always one of the company's most invaluable resources, ushered in the final-act redemption with chorales and invocations with an ethereal grandeur that made me want to be a believer.

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