Parsifal

Richard Wagner (1813 – 1883)

Information on the piece

Opera and poem by Richard Wagner
First performed on 26th July, 1882 in Bayreuth
Premiered at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on 21. October, 2012

5 hrs 30 mins / 2 intervals

In German language with German and English surtitles

Pre-performance lecture (in German): 45 minutes prior to each performance

recommended from 16 years
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Our thanks to our partners

Kindly supported by Förderkreis der Deutschen Oper Berlin and by Lotto Stiftung Berlin. The children's chorus is supported by Dobolino e. V.

Cast
About the performance

About the work
Drawing loosely on motifs from Christianity, Buddhism, assorted legends and Schopenhauer’s philosophy, Richard Wagner eventually completed a myth of his own, PARSIFAL. The work that he dubbed a “stage-hallowing play” tells the story of a “pure fool” who is blissfully unaware of his own nature and calling. Parsifal sallies forth into the ascetic brotherhood of the Knights of the Grail and into another very different world, that of Klingsor’s erotically charged garden, where a kiss from Kundry infuses him with an enlightenment that leads him to release Amfortas, the King of the Grail, from his suffering and redeem the brotherhood.

Wagner himself harboured a desire for redemption for decades and PARSIFAL was the channel through which he wrestled with the theme of spiritual rescue on both a personal and societal level. He shows society yearning for a strong leader as the architect of its own renewal. However, not even the installation of Parsifal as the new king can break the stagnated ritual of wielded power.


About the production
Philipp Stölzl is concerned here more than anything with the potential for aggression and the fanaticism of hermetic religious communities. An anti-enlightenment attitude, faith in miracles and an at times violent segregation from outsiders such as Kundry are themes that are reflected in opulent tableaux on this journey through the millennia.

Our recommendations

Tristan and Isolde
Tannhäuser and the Singers' Contest at Wartburg
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg
Der Ring des Nibelungen – Das Rheingold
Der Ring des Nibelungen – Die Walküre
Der Ring des Nibelungen – Siegfried
Der Ring des Nibelungen – Götterdämmerung

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02
DEC

Advents-Verlosung: Das 2. Fensterchen

In today's Advent calendar window, we are giving away 3 DVDs of "Der Schatzgräber" - an opera in a prelude, four acts and a postlude by Franz Schreker. If you would like to win one of the three DVDs, please send an e-mail today with the subject "The 2nd window" to advent@deutscheoperberlin.de.

DER SCHATZGRÄBER (THE TREASURE HUNTER) by Franz Schreker was a triumph at its world premiere in Frankfurt in 1920 and went on to play 44 times at assorted venues over the next five years. It then fell victim to a shifting zeitgeist and slipped from opera-house programmes, with a National Socialist ban on performances sealing its demise. Even after 1945 the Schreker revival was a long time coming – and THE TREASURE HUNTER has not featured prominently in the renaissance.

As with the vast majority of Schreker’s libretti, the story of Els and Elis explores the relationship between fantasy and reality, between art and life. Soulmates in the sense that they are both at the mercy of the king’s disposition, Els and Elis set off in search of different treasures. Elis, the minstrel, uses his magic lute to locate a stash of jewels and do humanity a good turn. Els, an innkeeper’s daughter who has grown up motherless in a tough, male-chauvinist world, becomes a liar, cheat and murderess in pursuit of her goal, tasking her suitors to steal the queen’s jewels and then having them killed once they have returned with the haul of treasure. Yet even with the gold in their possession, the pair are not content, and so, true to form, Schreker turns his attention to the theme of yearning per se, which is the actual “treasure” that the composer is interested in, “a dream of happiness and redemption”. Elis and Els are caught up in a swirl of dreams, memories, premonitions, songs and music. Their stories take on a dreamlike quality in a world beset by greed, murder and emotional inconstancy. For Franz Schreker the path to redemption could only be via art. Composed during the turmoil of the First World War, the TREASURE HUNTER score amounts to Schreker’s personal confession of artistic faith, executed in florid strokes of late-Romantic musical colour.

Conductor Marc Albrecht; Staging Christof Loy; Set design Johannes Leiacker; Costume design Barbara Drosihn; With Tuomas Pursio, Doke Pauwels, Clemens Bieber, Michael Adams, Joel Allison, Michael Laurenz, Thomas Johannes Mayer, Seth Carico, Daniel Johansson, Gideon Poppe, Stephen Bronk, Elisabet Strid, Patrick Cook, Tyler Zimmerman a. o.; Chorus and Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin



Closing date: 2 December 2023, the winners will be informed by email on 4 December 2023. The DVDs will then be sent by post. Legal recourse is excluded.