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2Sophie Koch was an astonishing Venus, making her Royal Opera role debut triumphantly. Rich and refulgent of tone, her voice was fully open; this, coupled with her sheer stage presence made her hypnotic. Perhaps Peter Seiffert was not quite her equal, and the opening scenes revealed a trait that was disconcertingly present throughout the evening: a sort of zooming in and out of focus for his voice and, indeed, his rapport with the role itself. Initially, he sounded disconnected and strained; then for a while all would be fine, as if everything was congruent once more, before strain once more crept in. He is an experienced Tannhäuser, for sure (San Francisco, Berlin State, Deutsche Oper and Zurich are amongst the opera houses that have featured him in this role), but this was not his night; the beam was not consistently on full, shall we say. Far more consistent was the clear star of the evening, Christian Gerhaher in the role of Wolfram. He brought a Lieder singer’s art to Wagner’s long lines, triumphantly: here was a strong interpretation moulded into human shape by infinite gradations of tone and flexibilities of phrasing. Lyrical and beautiful, his “O du, mein lieber Anendstern” brought the hushed intimacy of a fine liederabend at the Wigmore Hall to the far more spacious Covent Garden – yet the sound projected over the vast space perfectly. The role furnished Gerhaher’s Covent Garden debut in 2010. Emma Bell’s Elisabeth, another singer making a role debut, was magnificent. Set amongst ruins, “Dich teure Halle” needed all the magic she could inject, and her gleaming voice brought it through. Here was an intensely human Elisabeth, and we the audience felt her hopes and fears with her in the song contest.other small roles were well taken, including Michael Kraus’s Biterolf and Stephen Milling’s confident Hermann. Yet it is difficult to ignore the fact that the imperfect masterpiece that is Tannhäuser still makes its blazing mark. If Haenchen’s tempi alternated between injecting intensity and just staying the right side of feeling rushed, he remained within boundaries; and Gerhaher’s Wolfram made the evening worthwhile.
Argentine stage director Marcelo Lombardero answered Parsifal's enigmatic question of “Who is the Grail?” by literally replacing the mythical chalice with the suffering celebrant: a blood-stained Amfortas was lifted by ropes and hooks several feet above the proscenium during the consecration in Act I. His Christ-like body shone in contrast to the darkness of the abandoned power plant chosen by the Knights (dressed as contemporary soldiers in combat fatigues) to celebrate their ritual. The ceremony was ordered by a Titurel in military uniform projected in an old-fashioned newsreel onto a small screen at the back of the stage. No Argentine would have failed to associate Amfortas’s pain with the tortures suffered by political prisoners not very long ago. A further updating of the Grail myth to uncomfortable domestic realities was the staging of the outside world surrounding the temple. It consisted of a desolate forest of ruined buildings, among them the courtyard of a forsaken hotel beside a sombre lagoon where Gurnemanz had taken refuge. Lombardero tells me that this eerie landscape evokes the environmental apocalypse suffered by Epecuén, a spa town south of Buenos Aires, flooded in 1985 when an adjacent salt lake burst its banks after a long period of rain. The video accompanying the interlude leading to Act I’s second scene showed the remains of Epecuén after the waters receded nearly twenty-five years later. In Act III, redemption was in the air when green buds timidly started emerging in the courtyard, as if summoned by the Good Friday music. The glowing end was staged as a ritual shared not only with the Knights, but also with the audience: a spotlight left the stage to wander around the hall, stopping on a young child standing in the middle of the stalls. At that moment, the Knights suddenly advanced to the edge of the proscenium to sing their final ecstasy. Against this landscape of suffering and redemption, Klingsor's illusory world in Act II is a gigantic transparent globe with esoteric graphs projected from the iPad of a magician in a smart grey suit. Inside this bubble, flower maidens wearing leotards with thin LED lights running from shoulder to ankle rehearsed their enticements in mechanical contortions rigorously synchronized with the score. Real seduction was then practiced by Kundry on a Parsifal sitting on Klingsor’s throne as if on a shrink's sofa. After kissing him, Kundry immediately took some distance to observe his reaction, as if hoping for the refusal needed to enable her own salvation. Then Parsifal fell to his knees and the bubble burst and fell apart. A solid cast was assembled to cope with four performances over only seven days. Christopher Ventris sang a sharply-focused Parsifal, and convincingly acted Lombardero's proposal for an initially untidy and afterwards soberly self-contained redeemer. Stephen Milling was a forceful Gurnemanz, whose polished phrasing was replete with meaningful emphasis. Nadja Michael excelled as Kundry thanks to her richly, sensual voice and superb dynamic control and Héctor Guedes sang Klingsor with a deep voice and penetrating phrasing. Finally, Ryan McKinny's Amfortas was simply irresistible in his heart-breaking plea as the human Grail at the heart of this insightful and moving production.
