Wagner's Parsifal

[ChamberNut]

Must....resist...  I did resist three years ago when I first read your review but it's even harder now. I really don't need another Parsifal (already own Solti, Karajan, Boulez, Barenboim, Levine and Knapp '64) but Thielemann's way with the score does intrigue.

Sarge

The Thielemann/Domingo set is the one I have (the only one I have). 

[jlaurson]

Must....resist...  I did resist three years ago when I first read your review but it's even harder now. I really don't need another Parsifal (already own Solti, Karajan, Boulez, Barenboim, Levine and Knapp '64) but Thielemann's way with the score does intrigue.

Sarge

How about saving the money on the CD and hearing him live in Vienna with Parsifal?? It's truly worth it, no matter the singers or production.

[Haffner]

The Thielemann/Domingo set is the one I have (the only one I have). 

You're one of the reasons I'm considering that one. I have the Stein/Bayreuth, the classic Karajan, and the Kubelik, and oh BOY do I feel bad for those who haven't heard the Kubelik. It's often spectacularly good: the recording itself is about as near perfect as a Wagndreaerian could imagine. Clear, sensitive to the vocal and orchestral dynamics that the score intimates. It's mandatory Parsifal, in my humble opinion.

[Sergeant Rock]

How about saving the money on the CD and hearing him live in Vienna with Parsifal?? It's truly worth it, no matter the singers or production.

When are the next performances?

Sarge

[ChamberNut]

You're one of the reasons I'm considering that one. I have the Stein/Bayreuth, the classic Karajan, and the Kubelik, and oh BOY do I feel bad for those who haven't heard the Kubelik. It's often spectacularly good: the recording itself is about as near perfect as a Wagndreaerian could imagine. Clear, sensitive to the vocal and orchestral dynamics that the score intimates. It's mandatory Parsifal, in my humble opinion.

I did listen to the Karajan recording (my first ever listen to Parsifal) from the public library, and really enjoyed that performance!

[jlaurson]

When are the next performances?

Sarge

Unfortunately the next performances in Vienna (Easter) are conducted by Peter Schneider. You don't want that. And while I'd love to hear (and very well might) Welser-Moest's Vienna Parsifal in June (with Waltraud Meier), that's not exactly Thielemann, either. I'll let you know if I find out when T. conducts his next Parsifal.

[Solitary Wanderer]

Best Parsifal on DVD for a newbie to this work?



These two seem the main options 

[jlaurson]

Best Parsifal on DVD for a newbie to this work?



These two seem the main options 

Yikes. Boring and dusty. At least the MET (more boring, more dusty, but only slightly) has Waltraud Meier and Kurt Moll, but still I will not likely ever watch that Parsifal again.

I am interested in the Haitink Zurich Parsifal, but haven't seen it. Maybe my colleague has and he can let me know what he thinks of it. Wait... I think my boss saw it, too, but with a different cast that included Jonas Kaufman.

I've heard Ventris in Parsifal in Paris, and he was fine. Michael Volle is a superb Amfortas. (Bernd Weikl, not so much.)


I can whole-heartedly recommend Nagano's Parsifal, though. Best staging--by far--of the four DVDs I've seen (there's an older Domingo one, too).
Ventris again, and W.Meier (yay!). Salminen is a 2nd best choice after Moll for Gurnemanz, I can't stand Hampson in anything, really, but he's not too disturbing here. (And many people seem to like him. I only really like him in Busoni's Faust, but again, that's a personal dislike--like an allergy--more than a qualitative judgement.)
It's also the best filmed Parsifal, not the uninspired "3 cameras in opera house" mix.
Nagano is better on record than live, I find. He ain't no Thielemann... but he can get the orchestra to sound magnificent; he gets through the score without fussing about... there's much to enjoy. In any case preferable to Horst Stein and to my taste, too, to Levine, whose flowery perfume, so liberally applied, gets on my nerves after a while.

[Brünnhilde ewig]

Chiming in with my choice: The Nagano/Lehnhoff one!

Parsifal is definitely at the bottom of my Wagner opera list, but I wanted to see and hear Matti Salminen. It's mainly the direction by Nikolaus Lehnhoff, one of my top choice among directors. I know Hampson is nothing to crow about, but Lehnhoff has him moving around the set not always on his back on the camp bed, great innovation.

The Horst Stein/Bayreuth Parsifal has Siegfried Jerusalem getting his foot caught in a dangling wire showing off his prowess as a tennis player: He covers the whole 'court' without actually falling, while Kundry does her seducing.

The Levine/Schenk is hilarious! Siegfried Jerusalem sitting on a stump in a meadow covered  with single posies illuminated by different coloured christmas bulbs - and he is wearing a long, white nightie! 

[Wendell_E]

Chiming in with my choice: The Nagano/Lehnhoff one!

I'll add a third recommendation for that one!

[Haffner]

I haven't seen the Nagano/Lehnhoff, but now I'm VERY interested.

The Met has an at times excellent Kundry and not too much else (really poor pacing).

For me the Stein/Bayreuth is at times quite excellent, especially Jerusalem's Parsifal. Sotin, Randova, and Weikl (Gurnemanz, Kundry, and Amfortas respectively) can sometimes drag the scenes into snoredom. But I found the tempo of much of this to be better than average, the overall look to be pleasing, and the conducting to be pretty darn good (again, from an overall perspective). Alot of people seem to have a problem with the Stein/Bayreuth, but if this is your first Parsifal, I would reccomend it wholeheartedly over the Met and that often bizarre, unsatisfying movie. Act I and the latter scenes in Act III can at times be mind-numbingly boring, yet the preludes are done really well, and the Flower Maiden part in Act II is one of the best recorded, in my humble opinion.

Again, this is all opinion. The Bayreuth makes a terrific first purchase (having not seen the Nagano/Lehnhoff).

[Solitary Wanderer]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'd like to see all three of them now! Maybe the library has one of them...before I buy.

[eyeresist]

Wagndreaerian

[Lilas Pastia]

Yeah, I wondered if this was intentional...

[Haffner]

I wanted to see and hear Matti Salminen.

He's often spectacular.

Yeah, I wondered if this was intentional...

No, it was a boo-boo. Maybe it was a "slip", being a dreary Wagnerian.

[Brünnhilde ewig]

He's often spectacular.

The most spectacular I have seen him is his König Marke in the Patrice Chéreau La Scala production. Can you imagine Marke knocking Melot to the ground?

[Brünnhilde ewig]

Those are on-screen shots I took.

Back to peaceful Parsifal, apologyies for the off-topic post!

[Haffner]

Those are on-screen shots I took.

Back to peaceful Parsifal, apologyies for the off-topic post!

No apologies necessary. Those are really terrific shots!

[Coopmv]

IMO, Parsifal by Karajan is one of the best versions out there.  I just finished listening to the set last weekend and was totally floored by how good the soloists and the orchestral playing were.  The only fly in the ointment was the booklet that was printed on cheaper paper instead of the usual high-gloss paper.

[Chaszz]

This is a long opera: the first act alone is two hours and by the end our hero is just setting out on his journey. Parsifal is the Wagner opera least likely to set the pulse racing. Apart from the perverted melody of Klingsor in Act Two, the music is slow, entrancing and forgiving. Just as Parsifal must reject Kundry's advances, so Wagner denies his own gift for thrilling, hummable tunes. As the conductor and composer Pierre Boulez's wrote: "The piece places the emphasis for the first time on uncertainty, on indetermination. It represents a rejection of immutability, an aversion to definiteness in musical phrases as long as they have not exhausted their potential for evolution and renewal." This mutability isn't the tense, unfulfilled kind we hear in Tristan; it's as though Wagner were scoring the soundtrack to heaven.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/9908198/The-opera-novice-Parsifal-by-Richard-Wagner.html

Since January, Act III of Parsifal and especially the the Good Friday music have been reverberating in my mind, hypnotically, repeatedly, almost always. I saw the new Met production last week (my review can be found elsewhere in Opera & Vocal) and the music is still reverberating, only now a little more strongly. My pulse isn't racing but it is sure pulsing. And the Good Friday music is very hummable. Yes, the music here is somewhat more inscrutable than the rest of Wagner; I'd say the story is also somewhat less forthright, leaving a lot of riddles in the mind, and that they fit each other hand in glove. In every opera, Wagner nearly endlessly varies the musical themes, drawing the last bit of magic out of them. That is his method here. I don't know what a definitive statement of a theme would be for M. Boulez, certainly, the bell-like themes used here before being varied, seem almost overly definite. For me, M. Boulez notwithstanding, this is some of the greatest music ever written. After hearing the Good Friday music in my head for two months now with no let-up in appreciation, I would say it is perhaps equaled elsewhere, but not surpassed.