"Parsifal is an existential drama about the dilemma of our human existence. Under the guise of a religious drama, Wagner's music mercilessly tells of total loneliness, of living in an empty world stripped of all its former meaning. It is a world where everybody is an outsider, where lost souls wander aimlessly through time and space. By joining the world of the Holy Grail, Parsifal breaks a taboo. His entry is an invasion, an impulse of nature into a decadent and dead world, whose rituals have become meaningless and where all missionary consciousness has been lost." -- Nikolaus Lehnhoff |
| Particularly superb in this production is Lehnhoff's interpretation of the Holy Grail as a radiant blinding light on the other side of the steel wall. Is this powerful glow the aftermath of some recent spectacular nuclear holocaust that has now been accepted as a new god, or is it the light of some older established deity shining on humanity once more in times of trouble? Equally superb is the sequence when the knights meekly exit through the two side doors only to come back through the glowing center opening marching, wearing helmets and carrying spears. The Grail has miraculously metamorphosed them into warriors. This scene, which comments on the link that has historically always existed between religion and war, is one of the most memorable statements of this unforgettable production. |
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Christopher Ventris (Parsifal) "The wonderful thing for Parsifal is that he makes a journey through the opera and he doesn't come into the opera with knowledge. Parsifal develops through the evening, reacting and listening to the themes and to the words and the expressions from the other characters." |
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Waltraud Meier (Kundry) "Who is Kundry? Who is she? A lot of it will be explained through the music accompanying her, through the chromatic which is always with her. She is a woman of all possible colors. In every possible form, in every culture. I think she is unfathomable and unlimited." |
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Thomas Hampson (Amfortas) "He's around people who think that his wound is an earthly, temporal wound, and baths will help, and salts from Arabia will help, and all sorts of things. But, in fact, the only thing that ever can help is to reconcile his God and his actions again." |
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