San Francisco Classical Voice

The Festival co-produced Parsifal with Salzburg, in a raw deal for audiences there because they had to settle for the Berlin Philharmonic. Edinburgh, on the other hand, gave the magnificent Claudio Abbado (who first appeared here as a virtual unknown 36 years ago) the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, an international miracle of teen and twenty-something musicians, who play as the Berlin musicians do whenever they are pursued by their own inner Walkyres.

Imagine brilliant young talent, the best of the lot from Poland to Turkey, hungry to play, devoted, dedicated, passionate about music — and under the baton of a great conductor, whose recent bout with life-threatening illness has made him transcend all his past glory.

The hyperbole of the comparison with the Philharmonic is meant seriously. Except for some fatigue showing at the end of each act in the brass and a certain roughness in climactic passages, the youth orchestra delivered one of the most exciting and compelling performances of any Parsifal I've heard in years.

Abbado's assistant, Henrik Schaefer, who prepared the orchestra, is a violist himself, and he remembered from his own playing days that there is an "upstairs/downstairs" syndrome, opera orchestras are often not aware of what's happening — out of view — above them on stage. How much more true this must be for young players, coming to their first opera — and Schaefer was determined to change that.

In addition to "normal" orchestra preparations, the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra spent a great deal of time watching stage rehearsals, talking about the opera, getting ready to be part of the "total experience" Wagner had in mind. There was no separation here: the music came from all directions, with one mind, one heart.

I am sorry the exceptional musicologist Martin Meyer, one of my favorite writers, didn't have a chance to hear this orchestra, this performance on Sunday in the Festival Theatre, before contributing his otherwise typically excellent program notes. I doubt, if he had the experience, he would have concluded the essay lamenting that "almost everywhere throughout the music, one senses the feebleness of false pathos . . ."

Feeble and false productions are possible, they do happen, but not with Abbado, not with these fabulous young musicians, not tonight. You may discount redemption-through-a-kiss and Wagner's faux religion, but there the sweeping power of the music when played like this will not be denied. Opera at its best is not about singers or directors, ITMS! It's the music, stupid.

Speaking of directors, not even a lame physical production could interfere with luxuriating in the music. Peter Stein apparently had the good intention of going against over-busy stagings, but the product ended up near-comatose, especially in the first act. Except for making Thomas Moser (singing well in the title role) annoyingly hover around Amfortas (Albert Dohmen, with a striking vocal presence, although uncertain high notes), everything was as static as you can get — which may be better than the three-ring circus seen in other productions. Things picked up in the second act, but not for the better, Stein making his singers hop around and over a flower labyrinth, set designer Gianni Dessi's unfortunate idea.

Dessi did do well with the sparse, Chekovian forest and Scottish (?) lake, with Klingsor (Eike Wilm Schulte, singing well, but looking like a diminutive Osmin) on top of a flight of stairs dissecting the entire stage. The neon-lit boxes for the chorus were terrible, but Klingsor's satellite dish was, possibly, an in-joke about the Kupfer Parsifal with its TV screens for the flower maidens. The maidens themselves were not much to write home about, although Maiden/Voice from Above Elena Zhidkova is promising.

Violeta Urmana took a long time to warm up as Kundry (handicapped by Wagner's requirement to spend an hour moaning and groaning), but by the end of the great Act 2 duet, she was at her remarkable full powers. Hans Tschammer's Gurnemanz was solid and stolid, with a few instances of going south with intonation. I know Gwynne Howell is an institution in the UK, but his Titurel gave indication that it may be time to move on and turn the role over to a younger half-dead old king.

Abbado and the unusual participating variety of choruses (Arnold Schoenberg, Prague Philharmonic and, especially, the Tölzer Knabenchoir) brought a sound into the choral portions of the work I never heard before. Instead of a homogenous choir, with sopranos substituting for children, this performance featured the young voices prominently, and if fidgeting a bit as the hours wore on, the kids sang marvelously.

No one under 18 is welcome over at the Fringe's presentation of Springer, eager would-be audiences filling the sidewalk for blocks. The crowd is ushered in with amazing efficiency into the dreary but sufficient Assembly Rooms auditorium, and David Bedella, the scary Warmup Man, begins his work, getting the cast and the real audience ready for the main event.

This being an opera, there is no shouting of "Jerry! Jerry!," but rather the audience goes along with the chorus SINGING it. Rick Bland is Jerry and he conducts a show very close to particularly outrageous episodes of the original. Guests showing up turn out to be experienced, good opera singers, happy to get away from their usual work performing in Stockhausen productions in Berlin and elsewhere.

One after another, Valda Aviks, Andrew Bevis, David Birrell, Beverly Klein, Lore Lixenberg and the others sing their heart out, in music with undertones of Bernstein, Weill and Sondheim, set to relentlessly obscene and tremendously funny text.

Can we talk here? Quite free of attraction (sexual or otherwise) to owls, hoofed creatures and dandelions, I have a shameful perversion to confess. Much as I detest the TV show and dislike machine-gun delivery of "filthy language," I had an absolute blast at Springer. I loved the stories (none of which can be described in polite company), the bits of inner monologue under spotlight, characters pretty much repeating what they said in "public, the pathetic but somehow likeable character motivations of demanding attention, even if it comes in form of hostility, the variety of music — not all good, certainly, but with a strong kernel of a musical work that goes far beyond a spoof or one-line joke.

There is energy and aliveness to the work that make it entertaining, enjoyable, even attractive, beyond the obviously objectionable nature of it all. Before seeing Springer, I could not understand why its development over the past year attracted the attention — and even participation — of Cameron Mackintosh, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Royal National Theatre director Nick Hytner, among many others. Now I know. Urinetown, watch out; the real thing is coming, and it's going to make your medieval French peasant tummy jiggle.

(Janos Gereben, a regular contributor to www.sfcv.org, is arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group. His e-mail address is janos451@earthlink.net.)

©2002 Janos Gereben, all rights reserved