After an extended orchestral prelude of very slow music and after a series of plot explications sung by baritones and basses with only the occasional soprano for light relief, the title character of Wagner's Parsifal finally makes his entrance after 45 very long minutes. And, lo and behold, our hero turns out to be not the pure and innocent youth of the composer's imagination but an old man -- an old man with an astonishingly well-preserved voice, true, but an old man nevertheless. And therein lies the tragic flaw in this recording of Wagner's Sacred Festival Stage Work: for all the seamless conducting of
Christian Thielemann, for all the sumptuous playing of the Bühnenorchester der Wiener Staatsoper, for all the strong support of the rest of the cast,
Plácido Domingo's Parsifal is unbelievable.
Certainly,
Domingo can sing the part:
Domingo has the polished technique of a man a third his age and a golden tone that very few men of any age have ever been able to match. But his is an old voice -- through the polish and the tone, one can hear slight but unmistakable creaks and faint but undeniable cracks. And because of these creaks and cracks, the listener finds it impossible to believe in
Domingo's portrayal. For all
Domingo's mature wisdom and acute musical intelligence, he cannot transform himself into a pure and innocent youth and his inability to create a credible character leaves a gaping hole at the center of the work. Following his rapturous Tristan,
Thielemann's Parsifal is nearly as ecstatic and even more cogent and he elicits wonderfully characterized performances from the cast, particularly from
Waltraud Meier as the tortured femme fatale Kundry. But with an old man as the title character, this Parsifal is, ultimately and unfortunately, unbelievable. Marred only by the occasional footfalls of marching Grail Knights, Deutsche Grammophon's live sound from the Wiener Staatsoper is marvelously quiet and fabulously realistic.