In his 34-year career as a director, Andreas Homoki had done every Wagner opera save one. So when he was invited to stage Parsifal in Prague, he happily accepted. Asked after he arrived if the piece posed any particular dificulties, he said, “I think the challenge is to grasp what this opera is actually about.” Homoki offers not one but several answers to that question in his new production at the State Opera, which turns a spiritual quest into a meditation on decay, death and redemption.
The sole set is a revolving roundhouse, cut away on one side to reveal towering interior walls packed floor-to-ceiling with books. Doors covering the exterior wall open to let characters in and out, or reveal mini sets like a medical clinic. Homoki cited Kafka as an inspiration for recasting the Knights of the Holy Grail as bureaucrats safeguarding a storehouse of human knowledge, creating a striking if oblique visual backdrop for the first act. But Kafka’s influence works better in the surreal atmosphere invoked in the second and third acts, highlighted by the seduction scenes at Klingsor’s castle.
The three acts could almost be from entirely different operas. The first is all gloom and doom, with the knights paralyzed by the suffering of their wounded king Amfortas and his dying father Titurel, who is wheeled in laid out in a coffin. Young boys tease and chase a witchy Kundry, and Parsifal’s arrival with a dead swan creates a bit of a stir, but otherwise it is a static act, shot through with drab colors and despair. The orchestra reinforces that atmosphere with dark, brooding music anchored by tense strings.
The second act is like a burlesque, with Klingsor plotting and boasting in what could be a clown costume, then Kundry, transformed into a bewitching young maiden, trying to seduce Parsifal in an energetic bedroom farce. In between, the women’s chorus, clad in white Victorian corsets, tempts him in a brilliantly choreographed pursuit sequence. Lively work in the pit brightens the mood and propels the action, but the dominant feeling is of being a dream, reinforced by Parsifal wearing pajamas the entire time.
The third act goes sideways, departing significantly from what Wagner wrote. After wandering the world, Parsifal reappears dressed as a World War I doughboy. Kundry, instead of dying, becomes the central character – indeed, the only one left onstage at the end. Other characters are killed off instead, creating an occasional disconnect between the text and the revised narrative. An unexpectedly light, colorful treatment of the music adds another layer of dislocation.
At the premiere, solid vocal work kept the piece on track through all the changes. As the elderly knight and adviser Gurnemanz, Timo Riihonen dominated the first and third acts. Ester Pavlů turned in a remarkable performance in the double role of Kundry the witch and Kundry the seductress, carrying much of the second act with tender singing and persuasive acting. Matthew Newlin didn’t find his full voice as Parsifal until the second act, though in fairness, it’s hard to be taken seriously when you’re singing about “the bliss of redemption” sitting on a red velvet bordello bed in your pajamas. Martin Bárta had no such trouble as Klingsor, delivering sharp, authoritative vocals in spite of his whimsical attire. And Jiří Hájek and Ivo Hrachovec made the most of their roles as Amfortas and Titurel, respectively, despite spending almost all their time lying prone and in pain.
The choral groups were segregated for much of the evening, with the distaff side offering more nuanced work, especially with offstage vocals in the first and third acts. And their finely tuned turn as temptresses was a hoot. In the pit, the State Opera was fortunate to have a Wagner veteran on the podium – Markus Poschner, who opened the Bayreuth Festival in 2022. He mirrored and supported the work onstage with precision and flair, adding color, setting moods, punctuating the dramatic moments and maintaining an undercurrent of unease. In an opera that runs nearly four hours, the music never flagged, buoying the idle intervals onstage.
So what is Parsifal actually about? In this telling, the secrets of a sacred order, sexual dreams and nightmares, a reluctant hero who is beyond naïve and a mystical, cursed woman who achieves redemption. The latter is a serious break from the original, but Homoki sees her as a human being trying to overcome internal demons, not an external curse. One might argue with that interpretation, but after decades of laboring under the weight of Wagner, Homoki has earned the right to do a little tinkering. And if the results are at times disconcerting, they still make for a thought-provoking, entertaining evening.
