Richard Bratby

A completely satisfying operatic experience: Opera North’s Parsifal reviewed

By contrast, Royal Opera’s Samson et Dalila has left almost no lasting impression

Dark-throated streams of passion: Katarina Karneus as Kundry in Parsifal. Credit: Clive Barda 
issue 18 June 2022

When Parsifal finally returns to Montsalvat, it’s Good Friday. He’s trodden the path of suffering but now the sun is shining. Confused, he turns to the aged and broken Gurnemanz: why, on this day of utmost grief, does not the whole of nature mourn? Gurnemanz gestures at the woods and meadows, glowing, as Wagner tells us, in the morning light: ‘You see, it is not so.’

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