Rufus Wainwright

  The amazing opening string line of Die Walkure is blasting through my speakers and like that opera's mandate, it's time to get down to business. I first really got into Wagner after going to rehab, and the opera I most became fixated on was Tannhauser. I strongly related to the tale of the errant knight who had tasted the forbidden pleasures of Venusberg and like him was trying desperately to live a good clean life, despite, like him, an ego the size of Everest. I actually envisioned my drug cravings in the form of nymphs and fauns dancing around naked in an Arcadian paradise just under the sidewalk. That's what is so fascinating about Wagner, unlike Puccini, Strauss, Mozart and Verdi (who I must note is still my favorite, I will always be a child of papa Verdi) Wagner’s characters are always mythological archetypes who represent not so much people or Gods, but different philosophies in motion. And on going to Bayreuth this time to see Parsifal there were several philosophies I had in motion. One was my love of the work, the other was my amazement/ disgust after reading the Hermann book on Winifred Wagner, and thirdly was the fact that my mother has cancer. This was my second trip to the festspielhaus, my first had been to see the incredibly moving and abstract Parsifal by Christoph Schlingensief and at that time my mother was in the hospital undergoing exploratory surgery which later revealed a malignant lesion on her liver. It was the hardest time of my life, especially since I was working in Europe and she was in Canada, I felt horribly guilty about not being with her and until those first miraculous strains of the Parsifal overture began, nothing on earth could compare with the depth of my sorrow. By the end of the opera I was completely riveted, and would at this point like to thank Christoph for aiding me through this difficult period with his beautiful work. At that time the story of Parsifal, the other errant knight, or actually more specifically the story of Kundry, the Mary Magdalene figure who is doomed to live for 500 years for laughing at Jesus on the cross and aches for death, was a perfect legend to focus on when faced with serious illness: the message I got was that in the end, death is but a beautiful release. Well, my mother didn’t die and judging by her present state she's sticking around for a while. (I have to note that at this point in the Ring Cycle Brunhilde has appeared on the wings of the majestic valkyrie theme, of course! Basically, Brunhilde is my mom). So, with this experience under my belt, this time going to Bayreuth I was outwardly prepared to write a gloomy article about finally bringing my mother there as the end of a kind of quest where together we watched the opera and broke down simultaneously as the final strains musically revealed the cosmos. This didn't happen for three reasons. One was that Die Zeit only gave me one ticket and I couldn't sit with her (kindly Stefan Herheim the director gave us a couple of comps, so she sat with my boyfriend in much better seats). The other was that Herheim’s production had nothing to do with death but more with the recent history of Germany and thirdly was that the dark horse whose ghost still haunts the town of Bayreuth; Winifred Wagner was lurking in my thoughts.

On sitting down this time to see Parsifal with high intensions of writing about the purifying power of Wagner’s music when faced with death, Winifred's voice was in the back of my head saying about the murder of four Israeli athletes during the Munich Olympics, and I quote: "we've often tried to imagine how Adolf would have dealt with the killers.... as it is, they did only half the job all eight of them should have been shot." I really had to change my line of approach.

 The stereo beckons: the mischievous Brunhilde is being chastised by her father Wotan and will soon be put to sleep and made a mere mortal and in this story, my cycle, revue, blog, WHATEVER, a conversation about Stefan Herheim’s amazing production of Parsifal is warranted. And by the way, I'm never going to say anything bad about people's work in my reviews because I know how bad it feels to read it.

The production essentially solved my dilemma. As mentioned above SOMEWHERE, we had visited Villa Wahnfried earlier that day and instead of medieval Spain where the opera is supposed to take place, the whole piece was set on the grounds of the Wagner family estate, and was packed with references both to the family and Germany as a whole. The whole experience was frightfully eerie. All of the issues I had been struggling with after reading the Winifred Wagner biography were being grappled with on stage. For example, the third act was the bombed out mansion and the destroyed areas of the set were the very same spots our tour guide had shown us many moments before by pointing out the different stone work after reconstruction. The large circular fountain I had admired earlier suddenly became first a Knight's round table and then amusingly an Ester Williams (yes! I've always wanted to mention her in something) swimming pool for Kundry's sexy ladies in waiting. The prompter's box could have possibly been Wagner's tomb but that I think would have been a bit too literal (the Master prompting the singers what to do from the grave!). But for me most importantly, due to my aforementioned state of mind, huge Nazi flags descended during the famous spear catching moment and momentarily, just long enough to really sear the retina, stayed there and then suddenly tumbled to the ground while an audible gasp was heard and felt by the entire audience.

(please read Part 3 to continue)