What does Belgium have an opera kath, if you go if you go all the season openings. Three large professional opera houses in four beautiful buildings in Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent and Liège. We can only dream of that in the Netherlands. Of course we can be proud of the National Opera in Amsterdam, and the Reisopera is also doing fun, albeit with little budget in ‘normal’ theaters. Our third opera company Opera Zuid has all the potential, but is now so financially stripped that the PVV is desperately fights for preservation.
Earlier this month, a fairly horrible Faust premiere in Liège. This week, Opera Flanders and the Munt are doing well with a strong Parsifal (Wagner) and a delicious Falstaff (Verdi).
Approachable Parsifal
Wagner can often have been hard, and you do not yet know his oeuvre, then few Wagnerians will recommend you at his last opera Parsifal starting. Heavy, long, tanning, an inimitable story and especially bizarre sacral, with a confusing mix of Christian and Eastern teaching symbolism. You can of course delve into all kinds of interpretations for a lifetime. If you have less time for that, then Parsifal Be quite a bit.
But heaven, if not in Ghent (and later Antwerp)! There is a surprisingly approachable, air -permeable Parsifal On stage. That is mainly in the direction of Susanne Kennedy and Markus Selg. The stage is completely full, but unlike with Faust Almost nothing moves here in Liège. For five hours everyone mainly sings on their own square meters. Parsifal is sitting on the same stone almost the entire evening, the realm of the Grail Community hardly differs from Klingsors Bloementuin, the spear has been next to King Amfortas from the first minute. What and who is relevant when, do Kennedy and SELG to your own imagination.
What moves-both the projected huge AI-like colorful game world images, and the multitude of quasi-religious symbols and artifacts-form small circular movements that are sometimes repeated for tens of minutes. The theater image moves like a tree ‘moves’ in the wind; Like leaves hanging quietly and still not hanging still in the wind. In this case, the wind is Wagner’s music, which in this way gets plenty of room to fan out lightly. In addition, conductor Alejo Pérez does not put the music too heavy. Even the grand musical solutions at the end of the five -hour is, the orchestra plays at a great 78 percent. Also overwhelming, but not frightening religious.
The young Christopher Sokolowski (34) is a beautiful clear, from intensely naive to evangelically blissful playing Parsifal. Dsamilja Kaiser, Albert Dohmen and in particular Kartal Karagedik are respectively as Kundry, Gurnemanz and Amfortas compelling singers. Kennedy and SELG put them almost in order of humanity: Kundry is little more than an Android, Amfortas together with Parsifal seems to be the only real person on stage.
Falstaff (in gore green bathrobe) just before he admits his mistakes.
Photo Clärchen Baus
Dirty, false falstaff
What is not even thicker, it also works on the other end of the spectrum, proves Falstaff In Brussels. Just like Parsifal is Falstaff a ‘last’; The last opera of Verdi, with which he said goodbye to the genre at an old age. There was only ten years between the premieres of both operas, yet the difference can hardly be greater. Wagner opted for a sacral structure, Verdi for a light and colder story. Director Laurent Pelly cannot ignore slapstick, but Slapstick sometimes faints. Fortunately, he lovingly deals with it.
About these Falstaff We can be short: strong singers and orchestra, nicely put down, actively acted. Simon Keenlyside is a dream-falstaff like a dirty, foolish café stem guest. He sings great, but the real goosebumps are often thanks to his game in a flawless, comic timing. Sir and Mrs. Ford are also a pleasure: Sally Matthews Snaaks and autonomous, the desperate Lionel Lhote had a type of Herman Koch in gray tail -tailed suit with his two killers over a bare skull.
Director Pelly opts manageable for one ‘deeper’ artistic image, and that is one that lingers: the men with whom Ford comes to look for Falstaff are not an army unheated henchmen, but a huge procession Mr. Fords. All in gray tailored suit, all two strings over the skull. It is as fascinating as horrifying. When they all run in and out of the chic wooden stairs of his house in and out, looking for Falstaff, it’s like watching a live mounting scene in a movie.
Immediately after the break, the circle of the elves is just as interesting, but that recovers as the entire cast with genuine joy, the ultimate de-world-rotat-to-jerk-making-ending-allgoed. Falstaff, in his gore green bathrobe, including.
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Scene Parsifal. Graal King Amfortas Despite in the middle.
Photo Annemie Augustijns
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