Last Updated on October 2, 2026
A Bloody Dystopian Parsifal
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
A new Wagner production is always big news at the Royal Opera House. This season has two, with last night’s opening of director Evgeny Titov’s Parsifal to be followed in January by Götterdämmerung, the final instalment of Barrie Kosky’s Ring cycle.
Parsifal is Wagner’s his final opera, a “Bühnenweihfestspiel” (“stage-consecrating festival play”) conceived over more than 25 years and premiered at his own Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1882. It’s one of those select group of operas, Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Donnerstag aus Licht is another, that is an immersive spiritual experience rather than a conventional repertory opera. Wagner started developing his ideas for Parsifal in 1845 after reading Wolfram von Eschenbach’s 13thcentury epic Parzival, later also drawing on Chrétien de Troyes’ Grail romance. He completed the libretto in 1877 and the full orchestral score in early 1882, just months before the premiere and a year before his death.
The opera is replete with religious symbolism but is also reliant on Schopenhauerian philosophy and its conception of Mitleid (compassion), which Wagner extended to animals as well as to humans. Central to the opera is the mystical Christian ceremony of the Eucharist, which in Wagner’s hands becomes an expression of “Aryan Christianity” leading to the racial “purification” of Jesus’ blood in a renunciation of Jesus’ Jewish roots.
Influenced by Schopenhauer, who favoured Eastern asceticism over the more worldly Jewish tradition, Wagner highlighted the allegorical aspects of the Eucharist rather than seeing it as an expression of religious truth. The religious aspects of the opera, if not the racial ones, were misunderstood by Friedrich Nietzsche, who turned against the composer in his book The Case of Wagner.
Set in a mythical medieval Spain, Parsifal follows a naive youth whose destiny is to heal the Grail community. The Grail knights, led by the wounded king Amfortas, guard the Holy Grail and the Spear that pierced Christ; Amfortas was seduced by the ‘wild woman’ Kundry and lost the Spear to the sorcerer Klingsor. Parsifal’s introduction to the Grail community is inauspicious as he has killed a swan in the forest, which turns the knights against him. In Act II, Klingsor sends Kundry and the flowermaidens to corrupt the young hero, but he resists, suddenly comprehending Amfortas’s suffering. Years later, a mature Parsifal returns, reclaims the Spear, baptises Kundry, and heals Amfortas, assuming leadership of the Grail brotherhood.
Russian Director Evgeny Titov’s relationship with Christianity is less nuanced than Wagner’s. In a recent interview with The Times, he described the New Testament as a “very ugly, very primitive, very sexist story.” Titov and the set designer Etienne Pluss have created a dystopian post-industrial space set in an imagined future for the first and third acts, which are set in the realm of the Grail. Barely lit by brass ship’s lights, it’s Fifty Shades of Grey in the form of a theatre set. Huge distressed concrete pillars dominate the stage, which niftily pirouette as the stage is reconfigured. It reminds me of abandoned industrial warehouses in Berlin now reclaimed as art spaces. The knights are dressed in hooded linen tops, and it is only the purity and whiteness of the still twitching swan and the red of Amfortas’ blood that break up the monochromaticity and the longueurs of the first act.
Amfortas’ throne is a steampunk contraption reminiscent of a dentist’s chair that transforms into a symbolic cross during the Eucharist. In Titov’s reading, it is Amfortas’ body and wound that is transubstantiated into the Grail, with the needy knights queuing to take their fill of the “bread and wine” that gives them their strength. The embodiment of the Grail in Amfortas’ wound makes dramatic sense of both the king’s weakness and his physical survival, both of which are tied to the ceremony. Titov’s ending is a brutal and shocking denouement that implies a violent rejection of all that has gone before, with Parsifal curled into a foetal position under the dead Amfortas’ gurney.
Act II is set in the realm of Klingsor. It’s a much lighter space dominated by a Tower of Babel of video screens, a Moorish-patterned backdrop, assorted tech giving the impression of it being a surveillance society, and a series of display cabinets where various gold artefacts glisten. Klingsor has the best costume in the opera, a beautifully cut, shiny patterned suit that sets him up perfectly as the stylish baddie.
The libidinous flowermaidens with their stamen-like bountiful breasts are great fun, looking like refugees from a hybrid of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Roger Vadim’s Barbarella with its sci-fi Paco Rabanne costumes. There were some unwise AI animations of old master paintings dealing with the Adam and Eve story, but the video screens came into their own with Otto Pichler’s unsettling face pulling as Mama Flower.
French tenor Stanislas de Barbeyrac made his role debut as Parsifal. He transitioned effectively from a fearful youthful innocence and ignorance to a self-confident and regal presence in Act 3. He has the physicality for the role and a terrific Wagner heroic ring to his voice that will keep him in work for a long while.
The role of Kundry is complex. Bearing a curse for laughing at Christ during the crucifixion, she regenerates and can never find peace through death. She is a messenger for the Grali knights but also a tool of Klingsor, who uses her as a tool of seduction. Russian mezzo Ekaterina Gubanova as Kundry was resplendent in a remarkable series of outfits, with a voice that shone brightly above the massed orchestral forces. Gubanova, relentlessly seductive when needed, never overacted and achieved her final absolution with sublime grace.
Royal Opera House favourite Brindley Sherratt, just appointed as Artistic Director of The Grange Festival, has an endearing line in malevolent psychopaths. In this production he plays Gurnemanz, spiritual guide to the knights. The role is substantial if not as characterful as many he undertakes; he played the Doctor in Berg’s Wozzeck (see our review) as a humorously deranged Dr Mengele, but Sherratt is suitably portentous even if he sounded a little subdued last night compared to the other cast members.
German baritone and lieder specialist Christian Gerhaher makes for a Christ-like Amfortas, but this is Christ on the cross in agony, bleeding and desperate for salvation and death. Gerhaher, in Wozzeck in the production mentioned above, has a vocal tone that is imbued with tragic meaning, which is perfect for a part that has little or no dramatic curve.
Klingsor is the pantomime villain of the opera. British helden baritone Mark Stone looked as if he was relishing the role, and this prominent showcase will surely push him up in the league of Wagnerian singers.
Conductor Jakub Hrusa gave an energetic reading of the score that, if not quite reaching the velocity of Pierre Boulezian tempi, meant we all made our trains home after our five-and-a-half-hour marathon. He is in the pit for next year’s Ring cycle, so this was an exciting preview with some splendid string and timpani playing leading the way.
New Wagner productions are always a contested space, with online wars of words already being fought about this one. Parsifal is so complex symbolically that it is open to multiple interpretations. I’m a bit tired of endless operatic dystopias, but Titov’s dreamlike Parsifal manages to infuriate, entertain and provide insight in equal measure. Hrusa, the singers and band won plaudits from the audience for their work on what, despite any caveats, is still an essential evening of opera.
1–17 October 2026
Royal Opera House
Bow Street
London
WC2E 9DD
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