Inconvenient Truths: Mark Berry finds the Tcherniakov Berlin production of ‘Parsifal’ compelling and thought-provoking

Review of Parsifal, directed Tcherniakov, conducted Barenboim, Berlin Staatsoper, 2015.

July 2015, Volume 9, Number 2, 72–6.

The Berlin State Opera’s new production of Parsifal could hardly have been burdened by greater expectations, yet reality did not disappoint. Parsifal stagings must now be considered post-Stefan Herheim, just as much as an earlier era thought of pre- and post-Wieland Wagner. (We still do too, of course, even those who never saw Wieland’s legendary Bayreuth staging.) Dmitri Tcherniakov proves, unsurprisingly, very much his own man; it would be as absurd to imitate Herheim as it would his predecessor. Yet perhaps, consciously or otherwise, he may be understood to continue some of the psychological explorations which seemed increasingly to come to the fore in the final two years of Herheim’s production.