I answer here to
Jens's post in the "Recordings you are considering" thread, as it seems more approriate:
What a magic night, huh? Which week were you? I was week 5. Never saw so many grown man cry as after act 1.
Had also been on the last night of 2008, where W.Wagner was wheeled onto stage one last time to wave goodbye.
Shortly thereafter he was no more. But I preferred Jordan's conducting over Luisi, to the extent those two events can be compared. (I was familiar with the acoustic in 2012, but had never been before 2008. Plus the four years difference... Still, in 2012 I was very impressed.)
Magic, pure magic!!!!
I attended the performance of week 1 (July 29th). It was my second time at the festival. I had been there many, many years earlier as a teenager (1979), seeing the
Boulez/
Chéreau Ring,
Lohengrin staged by
Götz Friedrich (
Edo de Waart conducting), the
Harry Kupfer Dutchman (under
Dennis Russell Davies) and the--first--
Wolfgang Wagner staging of
Parsifal (
Horst Stein leading).
I actually showed up at the theatre without a ticket about half an hour before the box office opened (as I had business in Nuremberg the next day), and got one of three returns they could offer
I was a very happy man!
Stefan Herheim's
Parsifal is one of the most impressive things I've ever seen in a theatre. So many allusions, so many thought-provoking ideas, and such sheer beauty on stage! Philippe Jordan gave an excellent rendition of the score (although I do recall a short moment of lack of coordination between the pit and the stage in the flowermaiden scene--but it was his debut on the Green Hill); transparent textures, good dramatic thrust, and no plodding (even if the tempi were not brisk). The singing was variable, but never poor, and I liked
Detlef Roth's lyrical Amfortas and, particularly,
Kwangchul Youn's superb Gurnemanz.
The "eerie" moment I referred to in my post you replied to was this: if you've seen the
Hans-Jürgen Syberberg film (if you haven't, I strongly recommend it), you might recall that during the Good Friday scene, Syberberg superimposes the image of
Armin Jordan conducting to the sets of the film (which were, essentially, a giant replica of
Wagner's death mask). Well it was at almost the same point in the score when Herheim descended the giant mirror on the stage, permitting the audience to see itself (wasn't that breathtaking!!??) and also the pit and the conductor--the latter always hidden from the audience's view in Bayreuth. I found it a rather beautiful coincidence that you get to see father
and son conducting the same moment in the score in these two different productions, so many years apart. And coincidence it must have been, because Philippe Jordan only took the baton for the staging's fifth and final run (
Daniele Gatti was the original conductor). Jordan is back next year for
Meistersinger (I've ordered tickets, lets see if I get them)...
Regards,
