Muy bueno, todo perfecto

Opera Depot is offering the 1977 broadcast of a production that opened in 1975. Here are some comments culled from a discussion elsewhere of the 1975 opening: —“This was the first non-Wieland Wagner Parsifal at Bayreuth since the re-opening in 1951. This production was filmed for Video release in 1981.”— “I saw this production the following year. As a piece of stagecraft, it was stunning—I still cannot get over (or work out) how they achieved the scenic transformations, all in full view of the audience. I did work out the spear throw by free-framing the video—it was still pure magic in the theatre!”—“A good old Wolfgang Wagner production. Those were the days when the Bayreuth Festival was still worth its name and fame.”In other words Bayreuth hadn’t yet sunk as low as the 2004 production of Parsifal directed by Christoph Schlingensief. Suffice it to say that, during the final pages of the opera, a video of maggots feasting on carrion was projected on a screen for all to see. Tenor Endrik Wottrich, the Parsifal that year, was so revolted by the production—and by Bayreuth’s willingness to sponsor it—that he refused to return for the second season in 2005. (I’ve always been amazed that Boulez, who was the conductor in 2004 & 2005, would consent to work with a mountebank like Schlingensief after working on opera productions staged by Wieland Wagner, Patrice Chéreau, and Peter Stein.)