Opera North’s Parsifal, review — Wagner’s music casts its spell

The grail glowed down from pride of place in front of the organ. That was the only prop in this performance of Parsifal by Opera North — no sets or costumes, not much in the way of movement, leaving Wagner’s music to cast its numinous spell.

If the financial situation for the arts gets as tight as some people are predicting, this may be how we see Wagner operas for years to come. Opera North will have shown foresight in following its highly praised semi-staging of Der Ring des Nibelungen (still free to view on YouTube) with Parsifal, semi-staged at home in Leeds, but on tour in concert afterwards.

There have been memorable concert performances of Parsifal in London at the BBC Proms, conducted by Simon Rattle and Mark Elder, not to mention individual acts under others as diverse as Reginald Goodall and Pierre Boulez. The unique, cathedral-like arena of the Royal Albert Hall works a dream in this opera, imbuing it with a sense of infinite time and space.

The Royal Festival Hall is less accommodating, as the acoustic shines a constant, bright light on the music. Creating an aura of mystic beauty (Wagner described Parsifal’s orchestration as like “layers of cloud”) would be a challenge here even for the world’s top orchestras. Though short on beauty and richness of texture, the Orchestra of Opera North did well to survive the scrutiny of the hall’s spotlight with playing of such good quality.

This would not be the place for a super-expansive performance. Conductor Richard Farnes focused on accuracy and detail in the orchestra and paced the opera with a sure sense of direction. At around four hours, this ranked among the faster of Parsifal timings, but it never felt rushed. The men in the chorus added a strong contribution.

The company did well with its lower male voices generally. This performance was dominated by bass Brindley Sherratt, a world-class Gurnemanz, who brought a natural gravity of tone to the role together with dignity and a feeling for the character’s inner calm. Derek Welton sang impressively as Klingsor, symbol of the negative force of evil, and bass Stephen Richardson made a firm Titurel.

We have moved on since ageing tenors struggled to portray the boyish Parsifal on stage, but the bright, youthful tenor of Toby Spence is not quite the answer. His light voice has Wagner’s “pure fool” within its grasp, but lacks depth of tone and was pushed by the music of the later acts. As Kundry, Katarina Karnéus did not offer voluptuousness of voice, but she has all the notes for the role and the fearlessness. Robert Hayward’s Amfortas was sturdy, committed, but vocally wobbly. Most notable among the flowermaidens was the fine soprano of Elin Pritchard.

Opera North has come up with an effective answer as to how to present Wagner and, to judge from an enthusiastic and packed Festival Hall, has taken its audience with it. There are still five mature Wagner operas to go.

★★★☆☆

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