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Emilie Brouchon / OnP

Opera

New

Parsifal

Richard Wagner

Opéra Bastille

from 13 to 23 May 2018

5h10 with 2 intervals

Synopsis

From the prelude of Parsifal onwards, we are under a spell cast by music of sacred dimensions, tinged with esotericism and Buddhist and Christian references bearing a universal yet sibylline message. How do we comprehend a work that we must traverse like a forest of symbols? Who is Parsifal?
The ultimate incarnation of the new man on whom Wagner meditated all his life? Beginning with the legend of Percival and the Holy Grail, the composer brought his reflections on the fight between good and evil to their ultimate conclusion from which are born the virtues of compassion and renunciation, Richard Jones takes up the challenge of unifying time and space in the composer’s final operatic gesture: Ein Bühnenweihfestspiel or festival play for the consecration of the stage, unique in its beauty.

Duration : 5h10 with 2 intervals

Language : German

Surtitle : French / English

Show acts

Detail of acts

ACT I

Amfortas, the custodian of the Grail and the Holy Spear, has been seduced by Kundry and wounded by Klingsor who stole the spear. The wound remains unhealed; no herbs do more than briefly alleviate the pain. Amfortas and the knights of the Grail hope for the advent of the promised healer, a pure fool, made wise by pity. The squires abuse the strange, wild woman, Kundry, and Gurnemanz, the oldest of the Grail knights – not knowing that it was she who was responsible for Amfortas’ wound – reproves them for their lack of charity; she may be, as they say, accursed, but she now lives under the protection of the Grail. She was found almost lifeless in that place by Titurel, father of Amfortas, when he built the Grail castle of Montsalvat. Gurnemanz tells how angels brought the Grail and spear to Titurel, to be guarded only by the pure in heart. Klingsor, although aspiring to the Grail, was sinful and his self-castration made it impossible for him to serve the Grail, though it did give him magic powers, which enabled him to transform the wilderness into a luxuriant garden in which beautiful women ensnared the knights. Parsifal is brought in carrying his bow and arrows, having killed a swan. He does not know who his father was, or even his own name, only that of his mother. Kundry explains that his mother had tried to bring him up cut off from the world, to save him from being killed in battle like his father. He remembers having seen knights and followed them and Kundry tells him that his mother had then died of grief. Hoping that Parsifal may prove to be the pure fool of the prophecy, Gurnemanz takes him to the Grail ceremony. The covered Grail is carried before Amfortas and Titurel is heard demanding that Amfortas unveil it and allow its powers of renewal to sustain him, but these powers also prolong Amfortas’ life and suffering. He obeys reluctantly. Titurel is refreshed, but Amfortas suffers. Parsifal, who has watched in silent pity, is chased away angrily by Gurnemanz for not having understood anything of what he has seen.

ACT II

Klingsor summons Kundry and orders her to seduce Parsifal who is approaching. He derides her for clinging to the knights of the Grail, as if to atone for the wrong she has done them. Klingsor hopes soon to possess the Grail himself. He summons his knights to defend the castle against Parsifal, but they are defeated. A magic garden appears, in which flower-girls lament their lovers’wounds and reproach Parsifal. Enchanted by their loveliness, he wounds and reproach Parsifal. Enchanted by their loveliness, he offers to play with them but they have a different kind of play in mind. They are driven off by Kundry, now transformed into a beautiful woman. She calls Parsifal by his name and gains his confidence by relating how she had known him in his childhood, reminding him of his mother’s love and death, going on to describe his father’s love for her and to promise him similar delights, kissing him passionately. At once he feels the pain of Amfortas’ wound and realises that Kundry had seduced Amfortas. He is also consumed with guilt for his own youthful folly. He recoils from Kundry, who reproaches him with feeling for the sufferings of others, but not for hers, relating how she had laughed at Christ, begging him to bring her redemption by yielding to her; but he explains that her salvation will only be ensured by his refusal. She curses him to a life of wandering like her own and calls on Klingsor for help. He appears, throwing the spear at Parsifal, who seizes it and makes the sign of the Cross, causing Klingsor to disappear and the garden to wither.

ACT III

Many years later, Gurnemanz, now old and grey, is living as a hermit. He finds Kundry, almost lifeless. Parsifal returns, incurring Gurnemanz’s reproaches (before he recognises him) for being armed on Good Friday. With joy he recognises Parsifal and the spear, and Parsifal explains that he has found his way back through great suffering to relieve the torment of Amfortas. Gunemanz tells Parsifal that Amfortas has refused to unveil the Grail, so Titurel, deprived of its life-prolonging refreshment, has died. Parsifal’s guilt weighs heavily on him and he seems about to faint. Kundry washes his feet and Gurnemanz bathes his head. Parsifal baptises Kundry and Gurnemanz leads him to the Grail ceremony. The knights carry the body of Titurel and call on the unwilling Amfortas to unveil the Grail once more. Parsifal cures him with a touch of the spear and unveils the Grail, of which he is now leader.

Artists

Opera in three acts


Creative team

Cast

Orchestre et Choeurs de l’Opéra national de Paris
Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine / Chœur d’enfants de l’Opéra national de Paris

Media

  • Parsifal ... And Sound became Space

    Parsifal ... And Sound became Space

    Watch the video

  • “Who is the Grail?”

    “Who is the Grail?”

    Read the article

  • Wagner in its purest form

    Wagner in its purest form

    Listen the podcast

© Philippe Gontier / OnP

Parsifal ... And Sound became Space

Watch the video

Interview with Philippe Jordan

4:32 min

Parsifal ... And Sound became Space

By Marion Mirande

Created at the Bayreuth Festival in 1882, Parsifal is Richard Wagner's last opera. A sacred work that projects the viewer into the most mysterious and hypnotic musical time and space. Drawing on his experience in the Bayreuth orchestra pit where he conducted Parsifal in 2012, Philippe Jordan sheds light on the opera running at the Opéra Bastille from April 27 to May 23.

© Ruth Walz / OnP

“Who is the Grail?”

Read the article

“Who is the Grail?”

05 min

“Who is the Grail?”

By Simon Hatab

Based on the medieval novel by Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parsifal was created in 1882, only a few months before Richard Wagner's death, and was the composer's last opera. Of all Wagner's works, Parsifal is undoubtedly the most enigmatic: the opera offers a wealth of interpretations as dense as the vast forests of Arthurian legends. On the occasion of the revival of Richard Jones' production, created at the Opéra Bastille in 2018, Octave looks back at the various Parsifals that have been staged at the Paris Opéra.

Wagner did not want Parsifal to be seen as entertainment, any more than he wanted applause to interrupt the performances at his sacred operatic festival in Bayreuth: he forbade its performance anywhere but on the Green Hill. Cosima continued to respect the will of the Maestro for twenty years after his death and had no hesitation in banning disobedient singers from Bayreuth. It was not until 1914, therefore, that Parsifal entered the repertoire of the Paris Opera. In a stroke of irony, this opera about compassion and universal redemption was first performed at the Palais Garnier the very same year that Europe prepared to plunge into the Great War – seven months before the assassination of Jean Jaurès who was present on the opening night. André Messager, then director of the Paris Opera, conducted the work in a production by Paul Stuart. This French production immediately provoked one of those controversies that the critics of the day were so fond of: was it right to wrench this contemplative work away from its Sacred Hill to perform it in a Palais Garnier so close to the grand boulevards? But the polemic was quickly swept aside by the stunned reaction provoked by Wagner’s music: audiences were enraptured, fascinated by leitmotifs whose meaning appears limpid but which elude our understanding just as the significance of the Grail eludes the hero… “One must hear Parsifal, one must listen and watch and let oneself be swept up by the ineffable emotion”, wrote Gabriel Fauré in Le Figaro.

In spite of its success, from 1935 onwards, the work suffered a long eclipse. When it reappeared on the bill in 1954 it was for a tour with Stuttgart Opera. In 1973, for the first year of his mandate at the head of the Paris Opera, Rolf Liebermann entrusted the direction of Parsifal to August Everding, a German director who had taken over from him as director of Hamburg Opera. Meanwhile, in 1951, Wieland Wagner, had inaugurated a new era at the Bayreuth Festival with a legendary Parsifal that swept away the past. With regard to the revolution taking place in Bayreuth, the new production at the Paris Opera adopted an aesthetic in muted tones and although the director claimed to have broken with the austere scenography of the Wagnerian festival, notably through the presentation of a flower-girl tableau redolent of the 1900s, - “Anti-Bayreuth? Why not?” – he was nevertheless inspired by Wieland Wagner’s analysis, abandoning a mystical interpretation in favour of a psychoanalytical reading (Parsifal’s quest thus becomes the pursuit of a synthesis between the masculinity of the Holy Spear and the femininity of the Grail). Revivals of this production succeeded each other up until 1976 and provided an opportunity to hear Jon Vickers (Parsifal), Régine Crespin (Kundry) and Kurt Moll (Gurnemanz).

From 1997, the stage of the Palais Garnier became too small to accommodate the celebration of the cult of the Grail: Parsifal made its entry at Bastille conducted by Armin Jordan with Thomas Moser, Kathryn Harries and Jan-Hendrik Rootering… Hugues Gall entrusted the direction to the English director, Graham Vick. This production with its sober sets, featuring angels with rainbow wings, was also the first Parisian Parsifal with Placido Domingo and Thomas Hampson’s first Amfortas. In 2008, Gerard Mortier entrusted the Polish director, Krzsztof Warlikowski, with the creation of a new Parsifal which brought together Christopher Ventris, Waltraud Meier and Franz Josef Selig. The production bore the stigmata of the 20th century and was haunted by the child in Rossellini’s film, Germany Year Zero: his suicide in the ruins of Berlin was projected as a prelude to Act III. During the final scene however, a family circle constituted by a Kundry miraculously restored, Parsifal and the child celebrated a Grail now more human than mystical – hinting at the possibility of reconstruction after the catastrophe…

Ten years later, under the mandate of Stéphane Lissner, the Parisian audience rediscovered the work in a new production of Richard Jones directed by Philippe Jordan. Andreas Schager, Peter Mattei, Günther Groissböck and Anja Kampe respectively perform Parsifal, Amfortas, Gurnemanz and Kundry in a sectarian universe that is reminiscent of Scientology. 

© David Jerusalem

Wagner in its purest form

Listen the podcast

Andreas Schager interprets Parsifal

6:06 min

Wagner in its purest form

By Marion Mirande

Richard Wagner harbored the fantasy of a social and artistic revolution brought about by a pure, new man. Such is Parsifal, a character from out of the blue who, in the opera that bears his name, embodies hope in the Brotherhood of the Grail which has fallen into total decline. A major artist of our time and a true Wagnerian tenor, Andreas Schager discusses the role he has already sung in Berlin and at the Bayreuth Festival: a role he masters perfectly.   

  • Dessine-moi Parsifal
  • Pelléas et Mélisande & Parsifal par Philippe Jordan

Access and services

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Q-Park Opéra Bastille 34, rue de Lyon 75012 Paris

Book your parking spot

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Q-Park Opéra Bastille 34, rue de Lyon 75012 Paris

Book your parking spot

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

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  • With the exceptional support of Bertrand and Elisabeth Meunier

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