Acting
Wagner’s Romantic opera demands singing actors who can truly inhabit their parts, and that’s just what we have here. Is it possible for a Knight of the Holy Grail to look more enticing than Peter Hofmann? No wonder Elsa (Eva Marton) falls in love at first sight. Marton’s heroine is innocent, but she is also a passionate, real-life young woman—which is good, because Leonie Rysanek is positively demented as Ortrud, the sorceress who accuses Elsa and Lohengrin of using magic. With James Levine’s superb conducting, the orchestra and chorus are similarly magical.
The nearest Wagner ever got to religion was worshiping himself. Using opulent music he delivers his audience to an easy, pseudo-mystical experience. In this, one of his earlier operas, he is already showing signs of the mastery of the superlative that later would blossom fully together with his egomania.
Wolfgang Wagner's Bayreuth production of his grandfather's 'farewell to the world'has 'an unusual beauty and logic of its own ... with a double stress - on nature undefiled and on a form of religious symbolism ... There is an air of magic and mystery about the staging ... The performance was excellent ... Horst Stein conducted a beautifully proportioned Parsifal'. New York Times
This 1978 studio production of the prologue to Wagner's masterpiece is the only segment of the famous Salzburg Festival/Metropolitan Opera productions, first seen in the 1960s, that made it to film. Based on one of those original productions, Georges Wakhevitch produced stage settings and transformations that supported Karajan's concept with every possible means. Herbert Von Karajan's staging is in the epic style of another age, emphasizing the dignity of the gods rather than their all too human failings. With the singers - foremost among them Peter Schreier - Karajan had an ensemble that fully conformed to his intentions.
