Parsifal review – blood, lust and goth energy fuel Wagner’s Grail quest

Bayreuth festival theatreBig-screen closeups augment operatic action in Jay Scheib’s colourful production, with strong singers led by Andreas Schager and Miina-Liisa Värelä but inconsistent orchestral playing There is the grail, the spear, the wound that will not heal. There is a solemn, life-sustaining ritual. There’s a false paradise and an outsider who will redeem all. Even by Wagner’s standards, Parsifal is a heavily symbolic work – and nowhere more than at Bayreuth. It was the only work composed specifically for this theatre’s acoustic and for decades, Wagner’s family prevented performances elsewhere. Despite such significant baggage, this latest revival of Jay Scheib’s 2023 production provoked only half-hearted booing amid energetic applause for the musicians. The grail has become a large blue crystal accompanied by a light show. Kundry, the femme fatale, gets an avatar who seduces the usually unimpeachable Gurnemanz as the curtain rises, while filmed in closeup. The filming continues as Amfortas’s wound is unwrapped, poked and slowly sewn up, the nauseating results dominating Act 1 from a stage-wide screen. The evil sorcerer Klingsor is a kind of dodgy uncl