Note: This is a review of the performance on Sunday 25th May 2025.
Let us start with the positives of this new Glyndebourne Wagner. Musically it is performed to a very high standard. At the centre is a warm, dramatic, deeply felt Gurnemanz from John Relyea. The measure of his achievement can be found in Act Three when he continues to radiate conviction, and really moved me in his moment of recognition of the returned Parsifal, despite the directorial incoherence going on around him (not least it being visually completely clear to all from the moment he comes in who Parsifal is). Next in vocal honours I would place Ryan Speedo Green's Klingsor who again by sheer energy and vocal force managed to temporarily distract me from the mistaken staging choices of Act 2 - more exposed during the longer scenes that followed. He too fully commits himself to director Jetske Mijnssen's Act Three "vision". In the title role I was hugely impressed by Daniel Johansson, particularly in Act Two where his cry of "Amfortas, die Wunde!" and the scene that follows was delivered with that heroic, anguished ring that Wagner asks for from his heroic tenors and too rarely receives. I was reminded of Andreas Schager's unforgettable Siegfried in the Barenboim Proms Gotterdammerung. Kristina Stanek (Kundry) has a voice to pin you back in your seat, as with others copes brilliantly with directorial demands, but her major Act 2 scene suffers particularly in terms of creating emotional and dramatic impact from those demands. Auden Iverson's Amfortas is strongly and movingly sung. Lastly we have John Tomlinson's Titurel, for which he predictably received some of the loudest applause at the curtain. Mijnssen's additions are most thought through and effective with respect to Titurel and Tomlinson executes these mostly effectively and at times movingly, though there is a tendency to overdo things. The voice divided opinion in my party. For me, force of presence largely persuaded me to overlook vocal shortcomings. The supporting roles of knights, flower maidens and a senior knight who doesn't seem to get a clear credit in the programme all made fine contributions.
In the pit Robin Ticciati shaped a convincing account, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra played superbly. There were many places where the musical forces combined to deliver real emotional punch (& even in Act One some places where that was also in harmony with the staging). I would note two shortcomings. The first is not Ticciati's fault but there were places where he was inclined to my ear to take a slower tempo, for example in processional sequences and initial sections of the Act Two Kundry-Parsifal scene, and this combined with Mijnssen's failure to build drama in the staging led to a sense that musically we needed to get moving more. Second, the placing of the offstage voices was unsatisfactory from my seat in the front left Stalls. Indeed at one point it almost sounded as if those voices were being piped in, though I'm sure that was not the case. I found myself recalling longingly the superb effect achieved in this venue's Madame Butterfly a few years ago when the chorus were positioned around the back of the Stalls for the Humming Chorus. There is nothing comparable here and I did wonder if Ticciati had taken the necessary care to send people out around the auditorium to check the sound and the balance - we missed the expertise that a conductor such as Donald Runnicles brings to such matters.
