Busy late-night in Bayreuth, a city that seems to yearn for calm when its centenary festival opens in summer and Wagnerian madness breaks out. Menacing showers and clouds preceded the expected premiere of a Parsifal with Spanish blood on Tuesday, as the maestro Pablo Heras-Casado made his debut on the complex podium devised by Wagner himself to work an acoustic miracle. And as usually happens at each opening of the contest directed by Katharina Wagner, the composer’s great-granddaughter, a sea of ??cameras was stationed at the door through which “the rich and powerful” enter.
This was pointed out by an usher at the Festspielhaus. Angela Merkel, who never misses this appointment, appeared, arousing – alas! – less expectation from Ursula von der Leyen, who also dethroned her from the presidential box. Bavarian society made it clear in this way that the former chancellor is not appreciated, no matter how much she herself was the one who promoted Von der Leyen to the European presidency. At the first intermission of the opera, they came out together like the sun, almost hand in hand, but the media opted for the EU president to ask her questions.
The expectation went by neighborhoods in this excursion that Bayreuth always supposes. Because that’s what Wagner wanted it to be… trains and more commuter trains – like someone riding a horse – to get to the town and then make a pilgrimage to its hill. There, by the way, the visitor is surprised by a sea of ??small golden Wagners who, arranged on a grassy esplanade, extend their arms like a teacher before his orchestra. Or is it a welcome? Or a stop on the romantic journey towards sublimation.
The nearly two thousand people who filled the room on July 25 -and their umbrella stands- were preparing to attend another of Katharina Wagner’s experiments. In this case, a newcomer to the festival on the podium, coming from Spain, and a staging with alleged augmented reality technology in which a rather unknown Jay Scheib, an American, displays a vintage eighties aesthetic that ultimately turned out to be a I demoted a carousel of aesthetic nonsense chewing gum. What does all this contribute to what is practically a scenic oratorio?
The verdict was not long in coming: after generously celebrating the performance of the singers -especially Andreas Schager (Parsifal), Elina Garanca (Kundry) and Derek Welton (Anfortas)- the audience gave Heras-Casado a round of applause for his performance. on the podium, and an ovation was also heard for the man who is the second Spaniard to enter this pit. A reaction of great value if we remember that in 2018 they booed an entire Plácido Domingo for having arrived at this square without having done their homework. It was after celebrating Heras-Casado that the audience rushed against the stage team that came out to greet, and that received a good beating of bues and screams of discontent… released, yes, with a certain German joy.
Sixteen minutes of final applause were counted, which is almost the maximum for a premiere in Bayreuth. And that people had been there since before 4 pm, and between the four hours of opera and the two breaks, they had given it 10 pm. Heras-Casado had been in the shadows all this time. The pit is hidden here under the stage and only the singers have eye contact with the maestro.
Elina Garanca made great use of this visual contact, sometimes a bit lost in this production that she had barely rehearsed. The highly desired Latvian mezzo agreed to debut at the festival with conditions: she would not rehearse until the day before and she would only participate in three of the performances. Hence, given the delay with which the orchestra’s music is heard in this theater and given the difference of half a second between instrumentalists and voices, Heras-Casado could be seen on the monitor literally unfolding: with his arms he went to the tempo of the orchestra while with lip gestures he gave the tickets to Garanca with another tempo. Brutal!
The Wagnerian cotton test had been passed by the man from Granada with flying colors. Especially in the eloquent dramatization of the second act, when on stage the flower-girls who seduce Parsifal were here barbies dressed in pink, bordering on vulgar and excessive, while the sober beauty of Garanca occupied the center of attention projected on a screen. . The musical director kept the pulse of intensity steady without sacrificing transparency or clarity of dynamics. And what is better: he had the “good vibes” of the musicians, who have bet on him from minute zero.
As far as augmented reality is concerned… lucky were the almost 1700 viewers who were left without. The company that made them stopped working and the festival only got 330. They had to pay an extra 100 euros for them, but even if they wanted to, some couldn’t, because they sold out immediately. The experience, however, left a lot to be desired. The flying elements that appeared before the eyes of those who had put on the mandatory glasses ranged from minerals that moved like meteorites, to dancing skulls, highly synthetic flowers and electronic junk… all moving to a tune more in keeping with video games than with the Wagnerian state of mind.
In the line of what has been done with Wagner in the new century, Scheib resorted to the idea of ??denunciation and climate emergency. The much-sought holy grail of this testamentary opera by Wagner ended up taking Heras-Casado, so to speak, since Scheib’s dramaturgy followed the well-known paths of extracting minerals from the earth… in this case, lithium for batteries, cobalt for cell phones… But the lack of appeal was such that it was too lazy to try to make sense of it.
There are detractors of Katharina Wagner who want to see in these bets the reason why, for the first time in history, Bayreuth does not sell its seats fully in advance. The Times warned this week that the low demand at the Wagnerian festival – which before the pandemic had a waiting list of ten years – should be read as a warning to the world of opera in a century in which it is no longer accepted that this art is joyfully deficient. Although others consider it a post-pandemic swing.
