Bloody Instructions: Michael Fuller looks for more than gore in Michael Thalheimer’s Geneva ‘Parsifal’

To describe a staging as ‘monochrome’ is not necessarily to disparage it. But the colour of blood is such a feature of Michael Thalheimer’s production of Parsifal at the Grand Théâtre, Geneva (shared with the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf Duisburg), that the word immediately feels appropriate. It is an especially strong colour choice in a production that dispenses with many if not most traditional visual elements and symbols.