Cake’s stand
“…in Parsifal, instead of digging out the chapters from Metaphysics for Dummies (which is what basically everyone does, except Herheim!), [Calixto Bieito] made it a perfectly plausible story, close to us, to our lifestyles…
…delicately pushing you to reflect/question your intimate religion and of the world around you. That’s only a collateral effect his shows make on you, which is what why they’re so great.” Blogger Opera Cake offers a detailed take on the new Parsifal in Stuttgart. (Photo: Martin Sigmund)
That Parsifal photo plus the extensive array of clips by Opera Cake (on that other website) seems to depict mad loons at some garbage tip clowning around violently with what they happen to find, in the way of odds & ends. Well I suppose Wagner and his musical leading motifs means nothing – ‘That it was just another way some composer found to make up some music’. Then in posterity, having it trashed into a celebratory display of total inhuman chaos and callous heartlessness. Wagner’s Parsifal screams compassion and deep inner contemplation, not a contest battle amongst zombies on the refuse of Life, as part of some sort of ‘eliminate the latest of weak leaders’ Black Abyss cult. Since Parsifal is a ‘quasi religious’ Mystery Play piece, it has been a favorite of dilettante intellectual types to mull, about all sorts of philosophical constructs.
Was this not the opera (Mystery Play) that Wagner composed ‘as a gesture of forgiveness’ to poor demented King Ludwig the 2nd. No doubt to somehow ‘make up’ for just some of Wagner’s financially rapacious gouging from him, helping along the mad King’s ruin and sad demise. Look so.. there is one clue for a regie director ‘weak’ (right!). Amfortas has a weeping wound…’blood’ (right!) Let’s have some real blood-letting etc etc etc and the silly heretical so called ‘construct references’ go on & on.
The best form of heresy to subscribe to, and remember: One does not have to SEE Parsifal, to experience its total overwhelming force. It belongs in one’s mind. All it needs is the words and the music heard, with a non distracted mind.
The clips of that Parsifal referred to here,on La Cieca reminds of a ‘performance piece ‘ I once went to (on a free-bee, thank goodness!) about some supposed Bulgarian 13th century warrior. The small company putting it on (with some cock-eyed Art Grant) even imported some ‘famed’ Bulgarian woman director.Later it was found out she could not understand English and there was immense problems in cross- communication with the actors. Paradoxically the play was supposedly spoken in (‘Bulgarian’, I think?). The audience was given a synopsis sheet. It still remained fucking totally incomprehensible. A village setting: actors rang bells, women totally striped off and stood there constantly washing their ‘muffs’ out of buckets of water , women repeatedly spitting full mouthfuls of old coins out of their mouths, watermelons kept being smashed all over the stage and the male actor depicted: slicing his bald head making it all bloodied with a sword from time to time. I forget they had a a big pile of sand and made a big ‘wet mud pie’ with the water left over. At the end the stage looked a shit heap!
Any wonder I stay home and leave the masochists to go and watch such ‘dreck’ from some reputed new wave director!
Cruz SF30#:…”The prod, despite its regie foundation, sounds like it could actually work.” (Bieito’s Parsifal)
Tighten your seatbelt, Harry, it gets worse. We have already reached (in some avant garde circles) the ritualistic slaughter of animals, which equates with the Paschal lamb phase, and that means human sacrifice (Abraham and Isaac) is only about ten years in the future.
Trying to figure out what a composer might think about what they are doing to his operas many decades after his death is an interesting game, but not an easy one. There are changes in the world. Cars, airplanes, computers the cinema, TV, modern toilets and plumbing. On the other hand, cellos and violins are very much the same, and the vocal chords and the baton too. The past certainly has not changed, there are those Middle Ages for everyone to deal with. I think Wagner would certainly have many things to say in a philosophical way, in the obscure style of Theodor Adorno, and he would write extensive endless essays that the Reader’s Digest might sum up this way, “Music drama is music drama, the gutter is the gutter.”
B_A_B ; AS they say “I’ve being there…..decades ago and I do not have to revisit, to see any of the present regie crop, that they they are so so chic, so new, so daring!”
It was all going on before the present lot (if we want to similarly be blunt and deconstruct)were born and able to even dirty their first nappies. I remember some touring Dutch mod Ballet company did ‘Salome’ and requested a freshly slaughtered sheep’s head (on a platter) for each performance. I have known of others ‘wringing the neck of some poor fowl’ backstage and using it as a prop for some actor to pluck the feathers during some ‘peasant village’ scene. Where is ‘Theatrical illusion’? It all becomes a collection of wanton needless acts. Usually such shock tactics are committed by small rat-bag ‘desperately out there’ groups with its rampant-ego Head,being also some svengali-minded director trying to assert total manipulative control and obedience over his roster of performers, pushing them further and further with acts of delightful cruelty. It gives new and truly accurate meaning to the words ‘Cult theater’. Sure does. As Time goes on, these artistic concerns usually end with massive internal fall-outs and acrimony amongst the participants about ‘where the group was actually heading’. We are to assume there were talking artistically, of course. The actor minions apparently though, get too big and brave for the ‘monster’ Head to handle any longer. They learn how to , question, undermine and rebel…too!
Another funny ‘regie’ encounter I had was a opening night performance of Peer Gynt over 4 and a half hours, all done with monochromatic clothes and lighting. No doubt trying to get the then ‘chic’ Black/White Ingmar Bergman look. The audience seating was a long curve of stepped bare wood ‘sit anywhere’ rostrums like in some sports stand. There was a pile of big ‘take one to sit on’ pillows stacked up, down front of stage. As this excruciating piece moved on, I and a lot of other people made ourselves enough room, stretched out, head on pillow and went to sleep for the rest of the performance. Next night I heard the actors cut the work by a full hour.
Another similar Peer Gynt incident ( at preview – 3 and a half hours): The actor Keith Michell (of Irma La Douce fame) adapted it to become ‘Pete Mc Ginty and the Dreamtime’. Yes there he was as Peer / Pete in the opening scene up on top of a Australian outback shithouse with his mum screaming for him to get down!
Come opening night time duration I heard 2hours 40 minutes…missing 50 minutes and still a complete raging flop.
#34–Paraphrasing a quote I heard long ago:
The three things that never change are death, taxes, and the avant garde.
BetsyBob #27: You may find that a very small dose (2.5 mg.) of
valium at bedtime is a gentle assist to sleep and will return
you next day to us in your usual charming and lovely form!
Just a thought.
Inveterate Gossip #24 – this one (link from the Parsifal79 blog) has been around some time, in case you haven’t seen it before.
Thanks, Yappy!
Yup, he is kinda hot, at least from the back.
Is there any photo of when he turns around?
Glad to see you kiddies are so interested in musical values, rather than tenorial weenies.
Hey, I was just helping out.
Being usually more interested in baritonal w… alues, I must say from what I’ve heard Mr. Richards always delivers the w… ocal goods, and over the last few years his handling of foreign languages has improved tremendously too.
And no, I don’t think there is one yet.