(Photo Credit: Cory Weaver)

From the magic of those first ascending B flat minor motifs, to the shimmering chromatic closure, Wagner’s final masterwork “Parsifal” casts a spell of unspeakable radiance. A spell that can fail to materialize when directorial concept goes awry. The Nov. 2nd performance of the San Francisco Opera’s new production of “Parsifal” was an orchestral triumph, and a visual miasma. However well-meaning it was a conceptual failure from start to finish. Utterly assu at the helm of Wagner’s notoriously long (just under five hours) and all but inexplicable artwork, Music Director Eun Sun Kim held her enormous orchestra in amazing balance throughout, firmly negotiating the transitions from whispering pianissimo to triumphant anthems. While adhering to a slower pace than some of the principals, and the chorus, might have desired, Kim had mastered this complex musical text.

But magic spells, even those as overwhelming as “Parsifal’s,” can be broken by visual dissonance that wanders beyond mere interference into a territory of such bewildering choices as to obscure the focus audiences need to go the distance with this meditative, and narratively opaque work of art.

While the desire for a clear narrative is wired into human psychology, it can miss the point of a great work of art. Artwork can reveal that place beyond story, beyond rational explanation. Where space becomes time. That’s why this music exists.

A Cultural Shift Too Far

Though program notes worked hard to convince us that Wagner’s exploration of the Grail legend and the Good Friday salvation brought about by Christ’s cruxificion were in fact neither religious in tone, nor Christian, the production was incapable of erasing what the text and music proclaimed. If “Parsifal” is about anything, a point that certainly could be argued, it is about the quest of a spiritual community in search of redemption. A symbolic quest older than Christianity, and rooted in pagan mythology of the sort that Wagner ate for breakfast, it has been aligned for centuries with the fundamental rituals of Christian practice. That’s why Wagner borrowed as his central musical motif the ascending chords of The Dresden Amen.

Attempts to pretend otherwise, and to somehow blame Wagner for the opera’s inspiration rather than the execution of that inspiration, are patently inauthentic. Director Matthew Ozawa sought to erase most of that Western alignment with neutral costuming, Asian influenced choreography, and monastic adjacent gestures. The music, with its indelible architectural intervals and diminished chords still proclaims that we’re watching a legion of contemplatives, hungry for soul-saving ritual, looking for a savior.  And the music proclaims much more. From that first chill-inducing note, the music leads us into the center of a transformative state of consciousness. It leads into a spiritual state where the participant is simultaneously freed from human misery and released from the tyranny of mere narrative. The music is the portal through which Wagner bids us find enlightenment through compassion–“durch Mitleid wissend.”

Re-interpreting opera in order to illuminate new corners of the work, or in an effort to broaden appeal to new audiences, is the bread and butter of performance in the 21st century. But to place a seminal work of Western culture in the hands of those who would background the words and music in favor of visual noise or worse, visuals that bear no resemblance to what the singers are professing, makes one wonder why bother to mount this new production at all. Throughout this production it was clear that the directorial team simply didn’t trust the power of the music. They were determined to make it tolerable to audiences they imagined couldn’t hear, but could only check their Instagram videos.

Instead, the production team felt that the music needed the help of—I’ll choose an example at random—three intrusive dancers dressed in red samurai garb wearing lampshade-esque topknots to create highly stylized mini-tableaux at various moments during the Grail ceremonies. Were they opera enablers? Helping us to understand a text already illuminated by the words and music? A master class in butoh and early Martha Graham techniques? The audience began squirming at this point and never let up.

The Static Opening Act

Having seen four of Kwangchul Youn‘s 100 performances of knight Gurnemanz, I enjoyed the dignity and tenderness he brought to his role as keeper of the Grail’s history. A long, and often thankless role, Gurnemanz sings the backstory of how Amfortas and the knights of the Grail came to this juncture. Amfortas, valiantly portrayed by baritone Brian Mulligan enveloped in robes so massive as to appear dangerous, once lost his innocence to the witch Kundry and now bears a perpetually bleeding wound, played in this production by a red light inside his robes. A cost-cutting choice, no doubt. But frankly, it’s not as important as the music. Nothing is.

After a breathtaking opening image of grail knights suspended in mid-air, the first act deteriorates into a comatose soup of standing, moving up and down the precarious round staircase, sitting and listening to Gurnemanz. There is a great deal of walking around the many levels. The stage’s concentric circles turn and turn with hooded knights walking and walking. Presumably to create the illusion of journeying, this directorial strategy suggests meandering. Frankly these opening scenes are as boring as theater gets. An empty stage with rotating pillars. Semi-conscious grail knights, wearing on their heads what appear to be either small lampshades or a variation on the wimples worn by Margaret Atwood’s handmaids.

Meanwhile Kim is guiding her outstanding orchestra through impossibly sumptuous musical passages, huge chords that describe colors and textures invented by Wagner’s genius. Sound that would transform music for the next century. Special praise for the thrilling French horns!

And then, having just shot his arrow into a white swan, in comes a clueless youth who is chastised by a forest creature in a fabulous costume of fur and feathers. The wild creature is the ancient witch Kundry, sung with bursts of opulence and fire by mezzo-soprano Tanja Ariane Baumgartner. The clueless youth is Parsifal, sung by Brandon Jovanovich, whose plangent heldentenor is tailored to such Wagnerian roles as Siegmund, Lohengrin, and Parsifal for which he is becoming a go-to choice on world stages. When Parsifal weeps with guilt over the swan’s death, Gurnemanz recognizes that he just might be the pure fool who can bring enlightenment through compassion, “Der reine Tor, durch Mitleid wissend.”

Choreographic Overwhelm

The production comes to life in Act two. For Klingsor’s magic garden, costumer Jessica Jahn provides a feast of movement, dance, and brilliant color work. As the bitter magician Klingsor, Wagnerian veteran Falk Struckman articulates a richly villainous performance, driving his bass-baritone into its mid-tessitura as he flings commands to Kundry, now in her slave seductress incarnation. Why a lineup of long-haired bodies dangles upside down from the stage fly was anyone’s guess. Designed to ensnare the feckless young Parsifal, the magic garden blooms with flower maidens in shiny blue gowns, all vying to seduce the innocent wanderer. “Komm, komm, holder Knabe!” they beckon in one of the more engaging moments of the production. Now clad in a red samurai suit of armor, the handsome Jovanovich is passed among the lovelies, scarcely able to believe his eyes. So expert and complicated is the intricate choreography of the flower maiden’s flirtations that it all but obliterates some gorgeous singing by Flower principals Elisa Sunshine, Georgiana Adams, Laura Krumm, Jana McIntyre, Olivia Smith and Caroline Corrales.

When Kundry breaks up the unsuccessful flower maidens, she too attempts to seduce Parsifal. Here again, director Ozawa in league with his choreographer Rena Butler has added an extra-textual entity to portray Parsifal’s mother. Beautifully but irritatingly danced by Charmaine Butcher, whose voluminous pleated gown and extravagant gestures threatened to obliterate poor Jovanovich, this addition was not helpful. Audience mutterings of “Who’s that?” abounded. Augmentation is one thing. Ruination is another. Ozawa seems not to trust the libretto without adding training wheels.

With Kundry’s kiss, Parsifal tastes desire and simultaneously feels and understands Amfortas’ pain. Jovanovich’s reach as he cries out the “Amfortas” epiphany, fell a few notes short of its mark. Otherwise his brandy-toned heldentenor was superbly engaged with the role. Voice and the emotional epiphany of his character both soared eloquently in this Act. The vocal work was unleashed in part because his character was allowed to actually move, to display the puzzlement and anguish of his new awareness, rather than simply stand still with furrowed brows.

By this point the heldentenor had fully inhabited his role and made believable the transition from puzzlement to sympathy for the Knights and their agony. Klingsor, unwittingly releases the Holy Spear into Parsifal’s hands and with a last growl of malevolence dies leaving the lusty crowd to dwindle like a vase full of yesterday’s blossoms.

So sublime is the music that it can hold its own against even the most woeful theatricalization. Yet the abundance of choreography, and the attention to puzzling set manipulation indicates that this director and his team lacked confidence in the very masterpiece they were enacting.

Sublime Music Manages to Transcend

As Act three opens, we find the bedraggled grail knights circling and circling the stage. They’ve been on the road for decades, and now wear dirty robes to help us understand their struggles. Everything points toward the majestic convergence of imagination and sound, very slowly. Players are simply standing or circling, with the exception of those maddening three dancers in red, bending, voguing, making crisp chopping movements with their hands as if in a Crystal Pite master class. Parsifal is now costumed in a spectacular black samurai suit of armor, which will be unpeeled three more times until he’s left clothed merely as a generic Christ in a generic Crucifixion reenactment. Gurnemanz now pronounces Parsifal to be truly enlightened by compassion and hence worthy of the knights of the Grail. At this point Youn’s voice, clearly tiring, resorted to a pronounced vibrato, threatening both intonation and textual clarity. I appreciate that the slow motion movements align with the harmonic suspensions in the musical text. But Wagner’s towering chromatic structure deserves better than oversized white robes and distressing dance movements. As bells announce the dawning of Good Friday, Amfortas and company enter the Grail Temple for the funeral of Titurel, Amfortas’ father. The opera here regains its footing as a retelling of the Arthurian legend of the cup that held Christ’s blood. A sacred festival play, as Wagner put it.

Brian Mulligan, whose reliable baritone was able to pierce through his cumbersome costume and reveal its beauty (his voice, not the costume), was once again saddled with Amfortas’ minimalist movements. He was allowed to reveal the shining Grail, hold it over his head for a good twenty minutes until Parsifal touches his side with the Holy Spear thus healing the wound. The red light in the plastic box beneath Amfortas’ huge white robes finally sputters into darkness. I’ve seen night lights with more dramatic skills.

The knights begin the rich choral outpouring of the praise for salvation the “Höchsten Heiles Wunder.” Such dreamy music, as always, thanks to Chorus Director John Keene and his company. The substantial men’s chorus, gleaming voices perfectly rehearsed, surged ahead of Eun Kim’s baton. Or, perhaps the maestro’s tempo lagged just out of sync with the beautiful voices onstage. It was only a momentary flicker of otherwise seamless choral and orchestral union. But it was noticeable. At this last portion of the last act of this long hero’s journey, the conductor chose to slow the sound to a glacial pace.

Passion Play Redemption

While the orchestra spun the sublime music, we witnessed the penitent Kundry, now as a Magdalene washing Parsifal’s feet and drying them with, yes, her hair. Were we watching an Oberammergau Passion Play? Before the opera’s last moments Kundry and Parsifal, now clad only in a simple white robe, clasped their hands together, stepped forward to the very lip of the stage and raised their arms high in triumph. Have they become, somehow, co-Redeemers? It was difficult to fathom the tableaux fully because the trio of dancers in red arrived to punctuate the scene with their jagged movements while gesticulating in front of Parsifal and Kundry. As the final Grail motif sounded into a whisper, the tone-deaf choreography threatened the transfiguration Wagner’s music promises.

Wagner’s music alone transforms compassion into enlightenment. It casts a spiritual spell —the great harmonic suspensions carve out a space of transformation—without need of visual tinkering. Certainly without lampshades.