Parsifal (review)

Here is yet another reason to be grateful to audio restorer Ward Marston and his record label: a broadcast performance that has never been available to the public before, with legendary Wagnerians in the cast and one of the great conductors of the century on the podium.

Along with the renowned stage director Carl Ebert, the moving spirit of this 1936 Buenos Aires Parsifal must surely have been Ebert's Glyndebourne colleague Fritz Busch (three years after the conductor's refusal to collaborate with the Nazis caused him to leave Germany). We associate Busch indelibly with Mozart, forgetting his stature as one of his generation's most celebrated interpreters of Verdi, Wagner, and Strauss. The majesty in both the opening prelude and the conclusion of act 1 is something to cherish, likewise the lyrical flow of the entire Good Friday Spell, with the orchestra responding well to Busch's typically elegant approach. He flashes through Parsifal's entrance with fine excitement, but whenever there is a chance for "singing" tone from his orchestra, Busch relishes it, as in the main theme of the Verwandlungsmusik. Goodall-like spaciousness is not really his to give, and perhaps the Colón orchestra would have been unable to sustain it. He is also perhaps not quite gutsy enough for the Klingsor scene, but otherwise the drama emerges commandingly. Busch is a master of pacing—particularly memorable are the tension and mystery in the minutes before Parsifal utters his first line in act 3. The orchestral playing, while occasionally ragged and bleary, is generally worthy of the conductor, and certainly better than the recently released Colón Walküre performance taped twenty-four years later.

The release of any live performance featuring the great Alexander Kipnis is invariably very welcome indeed, and so this Gurnemanz proves. The Ukrainian bass is in mighty voice for all of act 1, and only in a few phrases of act 3 does he seem to lose a bit of energy, breaking a number of phrases where one would have expected a flow of legato. Generally he scores not only in the more expansive moments (has any bass boasted a more thrilling top?) but in pianissimo details of which he alone, of all basses, is the master ("Das ist Karfreitag, Herr" is sublime). The voice's individuality and sheer presence, matched by the singer's devotion to the text, cut through the poor recorded sound in an almost startling manner from the start (listen to the way he savors the double consonant of "mitsammen" early in act 1). This is a voice that speaks across the decades—nothing he does seems in any way old-fashioned. His is a well-rounded portrayal, and invariably a figure of not only wisdom but also positiveness. His gentleness with Amfortas, his intensely dramatic retelling of the Amfortas-Kundry episode, his pride in uttering Titurel's name—all of this, and countless other felicities of interpretation, truly reveal the character. We have had numerous splendid recorded exponents of this role, but Kipnis will surely never be surpassed; indeed, this role may well represent the finest achievement in his entire operatic repertoire.

Thankfully, Kipnis is supported by a fine cast. Belgium's René Maison, a tenor too little remembered today, was known for the fervency he brought to the title role. One senses his involvement in it in the first scene (listen to the heavenly mezza voce in his first voicing of "Herzeleide"). Certain lines are sung too quietly to come across, e.g., "Ich wusste sie nicht." He is outstanding in act 2, however...