A thunderous hammering of feet on the floor greeted the curtain calls of Parsifal, semi-staged by Opera North at its home venue, the Grand theatre, Leeds, before touring throughout this month. This noisy physicality added to the collective excitement unique to a great live performance. The epic length – five hours with two intervals – of Wagner’s last music drama, and the grandeur of its redemptive ending, almost guarantees a warm response, even if its quasi-religious scenario remains obdurately opaque. The outstanding forces of Opera North, conducted by its former music director Richard Farnes, made Tuesday’s performance one to remember.
The company’s Wagner journey began in 2016 with successful concert stagings of the Ring. Its first Parsifal has orchestra and conductor on stage, the action taking place in front and behind in Sam Brown’s simple but striking staging, ingeniously lit by Bengt Gomér. A board of lights variously glimmers and dazzles to suggest the strength and decay of the grail brotherhood at Monsalvat. (Other venues will be concert stagings only.) The baby at the end is tacky, and the knights, with their hoods up, have the look of hobbits, but everything else works well. Special praise to Robert Hayward’s fine Amfortas, the stricken leader who sings nobly and has to endure the indignity, half-naked, of his sanguivorous knights feasting on his wound. They may have been acting but it looked hideous.
