Shark in Parsifal: an opera best staged in the imagination.
Several 'best of' lists appeared in today's Guardian, including a number from the paper's classical critics that ranked the achievements of Claudio Abbado, Antonio Pappano and the Capuçon brothers as having been supreme in a generally exceptional year. But I wonder if those lists would have looked different if the deadline had been pushed back 24 hours? Because last night's Parsifal at the Royal Opera House was a seriously heavyweight contender for the title of Best of 2007.
For starters, it marked a triumphant return for Bernard Haitink, who, until Pappano took over in 2002, was the Royal Opera's music director for 15 years. The orchestra has been in good hands since Haitink's departure - as testified by the string sound, confirmed on Thursday as being amongst the best in the country - but in recent years the 78-year-old Haitink has been able to draw from deeper wells of inspiration than almost any other conductor alive. This Parsifal must rank alongside his very greatest achievements. Haitink's innate gift for long-range dramatic shaping has always been one of his defining glories, and here he was able to mould every act - each of which lasts well over an hour - into an emotionally satisfying structure with a distinct spiritual climax.
He was aided immeasurably by a genuinely faultless cast. Petra Lang's Kundry has been feted high and low since she debuted in the role at a Proms concert performance in 2001. Here she was excellent, but by no means the only star of the show. Sir John Tomlinson, reliably magnificent, was a matchless Gurnemanz, while Christopher Ventris was very good indeed as the title character. But the real standout of the evening was German baritone Falk Struckmann, making his ROH debut as the wounded king Amfortas. His performance as a man wracked by spiritual and physical anguish was believable and intensely moving, his powerful voice brimming over with guilt and despair.
As for the revival of Klaus Michael Grüber's strange, static production - originally seen in 2001 - the best that can be said is that it did not overly distract from the performances. Whether it added anything is, I suspect, a matter of taste. The Miró-esque neon blobs and inexplicable mounted shark that dominated the second act seemed to have been imported from a wholly different production to the relatively naturalistic Acts I and III. This, and the omission of some of the crucial Christian symbolism (the Grail, for instance, was a grapefruit-sized rock in the first act but made no appearance at all in the third) will surely grate on some opera-goers. Personally, I found it a little obscure in places, but likeable enough.
Anyway, the production is hardly the point. This is drama best staged in the imagination, a notion exemplified by Wieland Wagner when he dimmed the lights and stripped the stage bare in his celebrated 1951 production. Haitink and his singers delivered a virtually flawless performance of one of the greatest works in the operatic canon, and that is all the reason you need to beg, borrow or steal tickets for one of the remaining four performances.
