Mirror Images: Michael Fuller has reservations about a context-free ‘Parsifal’

Review of Parsifal, directed Audi, conducted Albrecht, Amsterdam, 2016.

March 2017, Volume 11, Number 1, 75–6.

Pierre Audi’s production of Parsifal, in sets by the celebrated sculptor Anish Kapoor, was first seen in 2012. It offers a vision of Wagner’s Bühnenweihfestspiel in which historical, cultural, literary and religious contexts are almost completely expunged. Instead, it is as though we are offered three contrasting reflections on themes inspired by this opera.