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Review 1:

Robert Commanday in the San Francisco Chronicle
?Parsifal?s? Grandeur on the Small Screen

Those who surrender to tonight's telecast of the Metropolitan Opera's production of "Parsifal" (at 8 p.m. on Channel 9, 41/2 hours in duration) need to have faith. Not literally, not in order to find the spiritual message in Wagner's synthetic religiosity and to overlook his despicable subtext of racism and sexism ? the great values are after all in the music and drama.

But it does take commitment just to stay the course through Act l's painstakingly slow, winding way into the work, especially after one grim and discouraging chunk of performance in its Feast of the Holy Grail scene. Hang in there. It will be worth it. The telecast is highly recommended.

The drawn-out narrative and musical introduction and exposition are of course fundamental to setting up the scale of the Wagnerian epic. It's essential for the imprinting of the themes so deeply and possessively in our subconscious so that their evolution and transformations can work their effect. All historic quips aside ? such as Rossini's "Wagner has beautiful moments but awful quarter hours" ? the music needs the time it takes.

James Levine gives the score grand space, working in refinement on detail and subtleties, never overdoing the dramatic events and climaxes to exploit effect along the way. He is always building toward the goals where the glorious occurs and we are transformed. Have faith.

Glorious Singing

Kurt Moll is the Gurnemanz, the Father Superior of the Holy Grail order and of all basses currently singing the role. The nobility of the Moll voice and presence make profound even the old knight's simplicity. Yet it is another artist on whom this performance turns, who makes it memorable, the mezzo soprano Waltraud Meier as the mysterious woman creature Kundry. She makes an incandescent impression. Her singing is glorious through all the phases and mercurial changes of Wagner's most dramatically demanding role.

Kundry is the ageless embodiment of the sinner who brings the woman cursed down through history for blasphemies, beginning with her scorning Jesus on the cross, and doomed to seek expiation for the sins she is compelled to repeat. Meier's facial expressions, as Kundry serves the holy order, as she responds to Gurnemanz, Parsifal and the events, illuminate the drama. The sense of Kundry's all-knowing insight is almost palpable. Her attempted seduction of Parsifal is simply the most compelling and tragic of any Kundry I can recall. The camera work under television director Brian Large capitalizes on that face. Act 2 is Meier's Kundry.

Siegfried Jerusalem is a fine Parsifal. His voice is even, his singing smooth and never stressed, his hearing in this touchy matter of portraying the "perfect fool" with the innocence of a primitive rather than an adult child is convincing. The critical moments of Parsifal's rejection of Kundry's seduction and implorings are quite strong.

The casting and performance problem centers first in the Amfortas of Bernd Weikl. His braying and roaring in the communion feast scene call for pressing the "mute" button on the TV control. You can count the waves in his slow vibrato before the voice straightens out altogether. Perhaps Weikl is finished at age 50, although he doesn't sound that far gone in the opera's final scene. Levine must share if not shoulder the blame.

Realist Style

As the evil magician Klingsor, Franz Mazura at 68 shows age in his voice but his singing protects it. A superior actor, he can still be effective in ways that escape his younger colleague. The Metropolitan Opera Chorus, too, shows its age vocally, the women especially. The male chorus of knights, far from thrilling, is just satisfactory.

The performance was videotaped from live performances (edited together) one year ago. This is Otto Schenk's production with sets and projections by Guenther Schneider-Siemssen and costumes by Rolf Langenfuss in the Romantic realist style that Wagner traditionalists admire.

The staging does what's required consistent with this old-fashioned production. While it offers no new thinking about Wagner and "Parsifal" today, it is authentic to Wagner in the old days and at the Met for all time, visualizing and documenting that faithfully.

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