Boy Meets Grail: Parsifal at SF Opera

The new production at SF Opera of Parsifal, Wagner's final opera from 1882, is a happy surprise. The nearly five-hour work has been both worshiped and reviled by everyone from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche to composer Claude Debussy, and its narrative of an innocent fool redeeming a corrupt world can easily be interpreted as a symbolic, misogynistic paean to White Male Christian Nationalism, which is how Adolf Hitler saw it. (Production photos are by Cory Weaver.)

What nobody disputes is that the opera contains some of the most sublime music in the Western classical tradition, and the performance by Music Director Eun Sun Kim conducting the large SF Opera Orchestra and an accomplished cast of singers was uniformly exquisite. The production, which often looked like a Japanese-inflected version of The Magic Flute, was wonderful, filled with surprising details while remaining clear and unfussy.

Previous appearances at the SF Opera by Korean bass Kwangchoul Youn were not that impressive, but his account of the wise old knight Guernemanz was extraordinary. His 45-minute narration of the back story that begins the opera can be a boring slog, but in this case his deep, mellow voice and composure somehow turned the scene into a fascinating tale.

The Swiss mezzo-soprano Tanja Ariane Baumgartner played Kundry, the only major female character in the entire opera. Like Emilia Makropolous in Leoš Janáček's opera, Kundry has lived a very, very long time. This is because she laughed at "the Redeemer" on the way to his death, and has been cursed to be the embodiment of Female Seductive Evil ever since. The role is usually a showcase for over-the-top scenery chewing, but Baumgartner performed the part cooler and more sympathetically than usual, sounding great in both lyrical and wildly dramatic moments.

Baritone Brian Mulligan returned for another fine outing as King Amfortas, grievously wounded by the holy spear that was inflicted on The Redeemer, after the King gave into his lustful desire for Kundry at the behest of the evil wizard Klingsor. This brings to mind Nietzsche's denunciation of his onetime friend and idol Wagner with a famous quote in his essay Nietzsche contra Wagner: "The preaching of chastity remains an incitement to anti-nature: I despise everyone who does not experience Parsifal as an attempted assassination of basic ethics."

German bass-baritone Falk Struckmann was genuinely scary as Klingsor while using the cursed Kundry as his lure to defile the holiness of the Knights of the Holy Grail who wandered into his enchanted garden filled with Flower Maidens.

Best of all, tenor Brandon Jovanovich performed the heroic, innocent fool who learns compassion in a title role that seemed to be written for him. Since his SF Opera debut playing Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly a few decades ago, Jovanovich has been singing heavy roles in major opera houses around the world, and any worries that his voice might have been run ragged were quickly dispelled. He was a magnificent and deeply sympathetic hero.

The production team of director Matthew Ozawa, choreographer Rena Butler, set designer Robert Innes Hopkins, costume designer Jessica Jahn, and lighting designer Yuki Nakase Link worked wonders together, and even the Flower Maiden scene which can come across as unintentionally silly, was equal parts pretty and mysterious.

Dancing in operas, other than those from the French Baroque period, often looks ridiculous but the movement works well in this production, and even deepens the fairly static narrative. Having a dancer incarnate Parsifal's dead mother worked well, though Kundry wearing the same outfit while trying to seduce Parsifal raised some disturbing questions. "Don't you want to feel what it was like when your father created you?" is a paraphrase of one of Kundry's come-ons.

Our hero resists her seductions, however, and after years of wandering returns to the Grail community in Act III with the holy spear he has wrested from Klingsor, heals King Amfortas with it, and redeems Kundry along with the entire community. In the original libretto, Kundry crumples happily to her release in death, but in this feminist gloss of a finale, she and Parsifal appear to bring yin/yang and male/female back into balance, a hopeful ending for dark times.