Layers of the Past
Page II
Herheim showed an interpretative theatre, acting on multiple levels, fraught with intellectual and visual concepts, and therefore sliding unwillingly into slapstick, Parsifal’s own story being combined with the recent political and cultural history of Germany, from Bismark’s time to the Federal Republic. His tortuous path through violence and compassion, his search for identity between coming of age and the simultaneous severance of an Oedipal relationship to his mother Herzeleide, are linked to Germany’s recent history.
The pure fool (der “reine Tor”) Parsifal stumbles, mostly clumsily and sometimes decorated with the large wings of a black swan, through pre-war and post-war Germany, and ends up as Jesus Christ the redeemer in the chamber of the federal republican parliament before spectacled members of the “Bundestag” (the choir of the last act). Here, Parsifal’s path as redeemer is fulfilled, and his own fate meets once again with the fate of a violent and tormented Germany. Both are now redeemed from their destinies’ ghost stories and their role as supposed redeemer. The redemption of the redeemers, the final call with which the opera finishes, happens in the chamber of parliament. World history has fulfilled itself, and ends in peaceful and friendly mediocrity.
The catastrophes of the 20th century appear on stage, as well as the precarious history of Parsifal-adaptations in Bayreuth. The idea and aim seems reasonable, but the implementation of both contained just too much of everything—causing death by suffocation. So the production obliterated not only the fulfilment of its own excessive requirements but also hindered the enjoyment of the opera as an interaction of drama and music.
The whole production was highly packed with symbolic metaphor from the plot as a whole to the many details. At the same time, scenes were brought on stage one after the other and without abstraction. The second act especially reminded one of a circus performance. Armies marched across the stage, nurses danced in a sick bay, Marlene Dietrich sang, Nazi flags were hoisted, war films projected, the mirror-room in Versaille suggested. A transvestite (“Gurnemanz”) appears, roses rain, wings flap, a large bed—seen previously in the “Vorspiel” as Herzeleide’s delivery and death bed—appears and then vanishes again.
In the jumble of political, social, art, and gender criticism, in the many different scenes and impressions, which continued simultaneously—behind, under, and above Wagner’s concept of the whole—his great unity of artistic endeavour got buried if not completely lost.
By the second act, one just wanted time to breathe, space to take in the music and understand what Parsifal actually is about. One longed for more transparency and permeability, for more breadth. The visual overstimulation and the material battled on stage, created barriers and confusion rather than clarity and awareness. Boundaries between the music and the events on stage, the forms of expression and plot, the audience and production, were built up further, rather than demolished.
Already in the “Vorspiel”, while Herzeleide lies dying in her bed, the boy Parsifal literally begins to build a wall at the front of the stage on the re-created grave of Wagner himself. Parsifal places brick after brick on top of each other and, during the first act, the wall continues to grow, to be seen again after a while on a large projection surface. The symbolism of building the wall is obviously manifold: the usual questions as to whether Wagner and his art can still speak to us (while offering a wonderful platform for self-indulgence and narcissism), to a strong hint of Pink Floyd’s spectacle The Wall, to the inner-German border and its fall, to inner walls, outer walls, and ignorance in general, and then, finally in the second act, to the destruction of a carefully built wall as an image of the devastations of war.
In the end and unintentionally, this wall proves to be a wall between the director and the members of audience, even though in the last act a mirror intended to diminish the barrier between audience and stage is held up to them: in the third act—staged in the chamber of parliament—a huge mirror replaces the emblem of the federal eagle for a short while. It is presented to, and reflects the auditorium, occupied to the last seat with expensively dressed people. The mirror also shows the normally invisible orchestra pit, which makes visible what is not meant to be seen. It looks impressive but in spite of the magnificent sight, one feels slightly embarrassed and caught, as one understands the purpose of the mirror: namely, to question the spectator for being so dressed up in order to be part of the social Bayreuth event, but also to question the boundary between seeing and being seen. What seems at first a successful surprise, especially aesthetically—one has to admit that the dimly lit auditorium looks beautiful and mysterious reflected on stage—after a short while takes on a rather stale aftertaste. It is easy to present to the vain, wealthy, and mainly federal-republican public what it means to be a member of a self-congratulatory art consuming affluent society. But the self-satisfaction and intellectual arrogance of the director also becomes evident, and the intended shock-effect is quickly lost. That which is sunken or hidden, the orchestra pit, becomes a symbol of the dark and secretive history of Bayreuth, and must see the light of truth—as the Wagnerian is forced to look for once into his own, century-old face.
The mirror, the building of the wall, the Wagner grave, are only three examples of the over extravagant symbolism of a production that creates no free spaces for the seen and heard to unfold. The overambitious ‘meaningfulness’ of the production did not cause transparency; structures of plot and music were not made more accessible by the use of many symbolic devices. Rather, the aim should have been to bring an enlightened clarity to the already very complex interpretation of the medieval story of Parsifal by Wagner himself, and strive to show its modernity and relevance for today. Instead it became more and more obscure and disguised. Over-interpretation led to a conglomeration of clichés, and made the production look dated and provincial.
Wagner anticipated some of the psychological discoveries later defined at the beginning of the 20th century. And one of the main and modern aspects of Parsifal is its psychological dimension. In his production, Herheim reduces the psychological aspects mainly to the Oedipal conflict between Parsifal and Herzeleide, which is too banal, and exchanges between Kundry’s and Herzeleide’s identity, which is scarcely original. There is much more to the story of Parsifal. For instance, it is about revealing the hidden and understanding the exposed. It is about diving into the deepest layers, down to the ground of human energy and drive, showing the possibility of redeeming the eternal return of suffering. This is the territory of depth psychology, but it also reflects philosophical aspects relating to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer.
The story of Parsifal is about a journey. The opera begins with the arrival of Parsifal at the mysterious castle of the Holy Grail after a long and difficult quest. At the castle, his real journey begins. He is led into the inner world of the self, and a new kind of consciousness is revealed. Here, the present permeates the furthest past; life and death, myth and religion unite, a new dimension of time and space opens up. This dimension of time and space cannot be measured chronologically or metrically, but reaches into the depths of the soul to realize what seems forgotten, make visible what seems invisible.
The eternal return of pain, guilt, and grief runs through human existence in a pattern of repetition. Only awareness leads to the severance of these patterns and to liberation. Nietzsche described Wagner’s “Weltabschiedswerk” (“world-farewell-work”) as the “epitome of moral and religious absurdity.”(11) However, Parsifal is far more than that. In it, Wagner shows the processes of psychological understanding, connecting them to religious experience as a related form of inner perception, and opening up a new kind of freedom: a freedom that develops from the release of painful entanglements, and reveals dimensions that lie beyond the visible and are ultimately beyond description.
Even Nietzsche, who was the greatest critic of Parsifal, and for whom the rift with Wagner became final when he read the libretto of the “Bühnenweihfestspiel”, could not help but be deeply impressed when, in 1887, he eventually listened to the “Vorspiel” for the first time in Monte Carlo. It was nine years after the first performance and two years before Nietzsche’s mental derangement, and in a letter to Heinrich Köselitz in January 1887 he admitted something astonishing: He not only confessed that the split with Wagner had caused him the deepest desperation all his life, but also that Wagner had never “made anything better” than Parsifal. For Nietzsche, Parsifal was meant to express the “highest psychological awareness and certainty concerning what is expressed, what is communicated.”(12) His previous ridiculing of Parsifal gave way to a contrary opinion—at least as far as the music was concerned. He heard an extraordinary "feeling, experience, event of the soul in the depths of music [...], and a compassion for what is seen and presented. Something comparable only exists with Dante, and nowhere else. [...] Was there ever a painter able to paint such a melancholic look of love as Wagner has done with the last bars of his ‘Vorspiel’?”(13)
If the music of Parsifal was composed to create spaces, perhaps it opened up a space for Nietzsche to experience again his probably never extinguished love and admiration for Wagner one last time. And shortly before his end Parsifal became a swan song for his life.
The tremendous transformation of material into the non-material, of time into space, of the hidden into the open, the transitions, transgressions, the various processes that take place as a continuous movement in the plot, in the change and development of the characters and in the music, require transparency in the theatrical representation. And the discrepancy between actual physical conditions in the theatre and the intentions implicit in the piece was a fact that Wagner himself was already very much aware of—presenting a huge challenge at the first performance in 1878 in Bayreuth.
In Stefan Herheim’s new, 2008 production exactly 140 years later, this discrepancy has not become smaller; it has become unbridgeable. And in view of the intellectually, interpretatively, and visually overloaded concept he has given us, it seems almost better to close one’s eyes in order to at least be able listen to the music, the excellent orchestra, and the choir undisturbed.
For Theodor Adorno, it is “the art of listening” that “has to be learned by the person who wants to understand the work.” In his essay “Zur Partitur des Parsifal” (“On the score of Parsifal”), Adorno emphasizes that Parsifal can only be understood in its “peculiarity and manner” if it is approached by “listening-after: by eavesdropping” (“des Nachhörens: Lauschens”). It seems that “the style of Parsifal does not only express musical thoughts, but it also tries to compose an aura for them at the same time, not in the moment of its performance (‘Vollzug’) but in the moment of its fading away (‘Verklingen’).”(14)
Adorno describes the moment when the here and now transmutes with its fading away into remembrance, where the course of time expands into inner, timeless space. In order to tune into this inner space, a special way of listening is needed: the “listeningafter” or eavesdropping. This moment of change from outer to inner translates the motive of Parsifal— “here time becomes space”—musically.
The contemporary German composer Wolfgang Rihm writes in his essay “Bemerkungen zu einem Axiom Wagners” (“Remarks on an axiom of Wagner”) on this particular manifestation in Parsifal. He calls it a “sound event which extinguishes and breaks off” but nevertheless remains “present as a growing past.”(15)
Understanding this concept and using a very slow tempo, Daniel Gatti, first time conductor at the Parsifal 2008 production, tried to support a conscious way of listening in order to transform the passing moment of the outer world into a lasting one of the inner. Perhaps he was attempting to counterbalance the over stimulation on stage? Nonetheless he was criticized and booed by the public.
Although the media gave a basically friendly reaction to Herheim’s production, the audience at Bayreuth was, at least in performances after the premiere, undecided; booing during some scenes, happier with others. Generally, the singers were considered moderate, good in some passages but certainly not excellent.
In the season of 2009 in Bayreuth, things will no doubt continue the same as before, with mediocre to bad productions. And probably this will not change much with the new festival management of Katharina Wagner and Eva Wagner-Pasquier. One can see more exciting productions in Berlin, Baden-Baden, London, and New York.
Nevertheless, I will go again — I have already got hold of tickets for Tristan und Isolde. One gets addicted to Bayreuth. Maybe it is the way Nietzsche has described his relationship with Wagner and Bayreuth: “The instinct is weakened. What should be avoided, attracts.”(16) Yes, and then I will send again the “typical telegram from Bayreuth: regretted already.”(17)
Notes
© Daniela Zimmermann—Nietzsche Circle, 2009
(published in Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, a web publication of The Nietzsche Circle: www.nietzschecircle.com, April 2009)
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Layers of the Past
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