‘Here time becomes space,’ says Gurnemanz in Act One of Parsifal, and true enough, the end of the new Glyndebourne Parsifal is in its beginning. We don’t know that, at first: the sickbed image that’s glimpsed during the prelude doesn’t resolve itself until the opera’s closing scenes. In between, characters appear on stage in multiple forms, at different ages – past and future selves attendant on the present, whatever ‘present’ means in Monsalvat. Wagner, after all, makes it clear enough that time in the Grail Domain moves in mysterious ways, and his whole musical strategy reinforces that truth.
So I can’t get too upset about those multiple personas, even though the presence of miming doppelgangers in an opera production is typically one of the most damaging of gimmicks. In this case, though, and in this opera – well, to quote Gurnemanz again: you see, it is not so. The director Jetske Mijnssen manages the interaction between the figures on stage in thoughtful and expressive ways, finding a language for what she evidently sees as the true subject of the drama: the awakening of compassion between a group of damaged, all-too-human characters. The deliberate pace of Wagner’s score allows the visual puzzles to disclose their meaning over time.
Whatever else this is, it’s a sincere and serious attempt to make sense of a work that asks far more questions than it answers. Visually, it’s handsome – in Ben Baur’s designs the Grail dwells amid the dark wood and sombre drapes of a 19th-century mansion. By Act Three, decay (or if you prefer, liberation) has set in; Kundry (Kristina Stanek) has shed her Victorian frock and an altarpiece of Christ has been turned to the wall.
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