Wagner’s Parsifal by Met Opera

I was advised that Metropolitan Opera is making recordings of their productions available during this time of at-home confinement, a different one free each day. My young daughter dislikes when I play radio opera on Saturday afternoons, which I do because there is no fuller use of the human voice, but she found herself drawn into the video streaming’s excellent reproduction of one of the comedies.

One thing I didn’t know when I began viewing Parsifal Thursday night is that it is four and a half hours long. Past midnight I felt tired, but I was not tired of watching it. In fact, I arrived at Good Friday about when the opera did; Act III transpires on Good Friday, so that felt appropriate. Sacramental communion and a people who are cut off from it, and the mercy of Christ’s atonement, is the central matter in the story. I was very glad to have taken it in before Easter. Those inclined could draw parallels between the fool/hero Parsifal who restores administration of the sacrament and Joseph Smith, prophet of the restoration of the fulness of the gospel.

This production from 2013 starts with the chorus looking like they just left stake priesthood meeting and were told there may not be another in their lifetimes. There are also women, but as presented the male chorus is the background for much of the show, and the female chorus is the background to the background. They remove their ties one and two at a time, then their suit jackets, and their watches, and their shoes, and matters proceed with this sorrowful barefoot throng in slacks and open-necked white shirts. The stars are excellent, of course, but something you get with a production at this level is that every single person on stage performs excellently, and there are dozens of them. I was quite taken by their wretched state near the end, cut off from what sustains them, lost in their own paths to feed on common stuff, not what they truly need.

For those who might like this, streaming of the 2013 production is available for $4.99. Here are lengthy preview segments that give an idea of the aesthetic: link.