Yannick Nézet-Séguin: triumph deserved for "Parsifal"

Photo: Christina Alonso Festival of Lanaudière
"Parsifal" in concert version on Sunday, August 6 in Lanaudière. From left to right, Christian Elsner (Parsifal), Mihoko Fujimura (Kundry), Peter Rose (Gurnemanz).

Yannick Nézet-Séguin said it repeatedly: he loves Parsifal . That was agreed on this Sunday clement in Lanaudière. The Festival could thank the sponsors Marina Kellen French and Jacqueline Desmarais, who made the titanic thing possible and brought to this edition of the 40th anniversary an ultimate relief that it lacked otherwise.

Parsifal , here, it had not been seen or heard since the 1950s! For festival-goers, it was a gift; For Yannick Nézet-Séguin as well. A very useful gift. The Quebec chief will run Parsifal at the Met in February 2018 and although he is gifted, he can not lose his " Parsifalian virginity" in New York.

Rodding an opera in concert before plunging into the pit is common practice. It earned us Montreal's Pelléas and Melisande from Kent Nagano a few weeks before his debut at the Hamburg Opera, Rhine Gold too, Nagano going to test The Walkyrie in Moscow, Siegfried in Bergen, Norway before his Ring at Munich. It was vital for Nézet-Séguin, and Sunday's concert is going to be a vital working substrate in the next six months.

For there is what the public sees and feels: a swell, confidence goes up, an affinity with the second act in full, the transfiguration of Parsifal in the third, and a masterful end of the first act with the coming of Parsifal in The residence of the Grail for the dinner of the knights (passage with Titurel). There also is a conductor who knows this work through the last "holders" of Parsifal in Bayreuth (Levine and Gatti), waits and sees. Impressive for a "first", the Parsifal Yannick Nézet-Séguin will be masterful to another level in six months.

Music and philosophy

To do this, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who matures things faster than any other leader, will focus mainly on the first act, and especially the first hour. What ambitus have the dynamics and the incessant changes of rhythms and, above all, what is the role of silence in Parsifal?

It is a philosophical question and I will give only one example. The whole meaning of the work is that compassion (the German word "Mitleid") can change the destiny of humanity. The word Mitleid is the equivalent of "Freude" (joy) in the 9th of Beethoven. It occurs for the first time in the first act on page 140 of the score. Four boys suspect the key to the mystery: " Durch Mitleid wissend der reine Tor" (it is about the compassionate innocent who will deliver the world). At that moment, Wagner sets a high point on the silence and he asks that this silence be long to mark a pause; That of reflection. The fiery Yannick, he (like others: this is part of a tradition, Which rhymes with bad habit), plunges into the next scene of action. But Wagner is not an action movie ...

Now that this role is taken, the leader will find these keys. The evening was overwhelming, including the stunning gift of the musicians of the Orchester Métropolitain to their conductor. Such a commitment, such concentration, is indescribable in a musical world so often blasé. The choir also held the shock of a tricky score.

The singers, amplified (I can not comment on the amplification, because the echo from the back probably depended on the place of each one), were globally well distributed. The heroine of the evening was the stunning Mihoko Fujimura in Kundry, almost more a metaphysical concept than a carnal character. Peter Rose, legitimately tired in the third act, held the crushing role of Gurnemanz with valor, just like Christian Elsner in Parsifal slightly barytonnant. Boaz Daniel in Klingsor and Thomas Goerz in Titurel, the flower girls, the comrades, were all in their place. As for Brett Polegato's Amfortas, he's back on stage. Polegato potentially has the stature of the role, but his way of deporting his head to his left singing it out of the axis of the microphone and serving him.

As for the external hazards, so striking this weekend, they were limited to one, but it was raging. Knowing that Parsifal is an "innocent", we had two Parsifal at the same place. In fact, he found himself energetic to get up on Sunday morning, saying to himself: "I will take my two-year-old son to see a five-hour opera! " Does What happened? The kid began to scream and shout during the second half of the 100 minutes of the first act. To save a few pieces of guarding, our quidam bungled for 5000 people an important part of a show several hundred thousand. Hat, the artist!

Author's note after posting
Following an exchange with the leader, it appears that our respective scores differ in the passage to which the above text refers.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin uses the Schott score of 1972, edited by Egon Voss and Marin Geck. In particular, it refers to an indication given in rehearsal by Wagner that it should not pause after the high point at bar 741.

The Peters / Mottl edition and the earlier Schott edition that we had at the concert not only do not include this mention but "break the nail" by adding the words "Lange! " On the pause in the line of the cellos.

This explains the difference in perspective.
Parsifal
De Wagner (concert version). Christian Elsner (Parsifal), Mihoko Fujimura (Kundry), Peter Rose (Gurnemanz), Brett Polegato (Amfortas), Boaz Daniel (Klingsor), Thomas Goerz (Titurel), Choir and Orchester Métropolitain. At the Lanaudière Festival at the Fernand-Lindsay amphitheater, August 6th.