Director Evgeny Titov makes his Covent Garden debut with this new Parsifal, a vision made visceral via Etienne Pluss’ sets and D. M. Wood’s lighting. ‘Dystopian’ seems the mot juste for Titov’s take on Wagner’s Bühnenweihfestspiel. Acts One and Three take place in what the programme describes as ‘evoking a monumental space between a bunker, a factory and a cathedral,’ with the progress of years showing markedly in the final act’s crumbling architecture: a delineated interiority one step further than the Wagner-period house of Jetske Mijnssen’s staging at Glyndebourne. Titov’s is a Parsifal that sees little light: often literally. The (dead) swan is the only real white in act one; costumes are predominantly black, while Parsifal appears in grey – a liminal colour between dark and light, as befits his status on arrival. There is machinery on stage, but from somewhere perhaps Planet Earth-adjacent: steampunk seems to be an influence in the television screens of Klingsor’s act two lair. But The Handmaid’s Tale, another alt-world, seems close by in the headdresses of the Flowermaidens’ almost insectile costumes (by Esher Bialas). The sense of oppression of the first act and its sense of militaristic observation speaks of a stifling, fear-based society; the World’s surface seems another universe.
The staging is stark, with monumental (mobile) pillars perhaps evoking the undercroft of a temple or cathedral, the first of several nods to Christianity. A central concept seems to be the closing of cycles. Firstly, Kundry’s endless cycle of incarnations, listed by Klingsor as Gundrygya, Herodia, Kundry, implying in the process others: Rebecca Franks, in her booklet essay Sexism, Feminism and Musical Temptation in Parsifal, posits Lilith the primordial demoness as the ‘Urteufelin’ of Wagner’s text. The second ‘closing’ is that of Amfortas’ eternal pain, repeatedly but only temporarily eased via bathing. These cycles are broken – but not, perhaps, how one might expect. At the close, there is no white dove of peace descending from above and circling above Parsifal-Redeemer’s head; instead, the end is bloody, and shocking, the spear put to a use that is either unholy, or merciful, depending on one’s perspective (and possibly linking into contemporary discussions of assisted dying). As for Kundry, in a striking gesture her final departure, carried out aloft, is cruciform in nature.
But Titov’s foundational starkness begets dissonance with text: the Good Friday music, with its opening out of Spring, is heard against a dark and dank interior (itself perhaps a metaphorical ‘forest’ of metaphysical entanglings). Starkness begets directness, and with that, the power to cause revulsion: the communion of the knights finds them drinking the blood of Amfortas straight from Klingsor’s infamous wound. Asceticism is another reflection of this foundation: our introduction to Amfortas is Christian Gerhaher in tatters of ‘clothes,’ limpingly wheeling a gurney that will later hold the dying swan and, later still, Titurel’s besheeted body. Thanks to the miracles of technology, we see the swan twitch in its death throes, a visceral reminder of the delicacy of life – a long way from the Muppet Show-reject bouncing rubber swan of Joachim Herz’s 1986 ENO production.
As to the Monsalvat-Klingsor schism, conflict creates extremes, Titov seems to say: not quite the post-apocalyptic world of Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s 1998 ENO stab at Parsifal, that stage dominated by a huge embedded meteorite, but close. Perhaps only in such scenarios can oppositions of pure good and pure evil co-exist (discuss, after glancing at the newspapers of today …).
Other directorial sleights are worthy of comment. In his realm, Klingsor keeps the artefact of the spear in a glass cabinet that is shattered, and memories of the Regents Opera Bethnal Green Ring seem unavoidable. A troupe of very young girls in colourful frocks implies they are proto-flowermaidens. Parsifal suckling Kundry’s breast in the second act seduction, while it makes sense in the context of Kundry’s emotional manipulation of Parisifal via his mother, seems crass. There are a lot of ideas and, while not quite the directorial overwhelm of William Kentridge’s recent Glyndebourne Monteverdi Orfeo, perhaps some thinning in revivals (should they occur) might be worth considering.
There is clearly deep thought here, though, as there is in aligning the production with the music, most powerfully placing that act Two Kiss between Kundry and Parsifal directly on the arrival of the major triad (remembering that in Klingsor’s realm, even tonality is inverted, bastardised: the major triad appears as dissonance because Wagner has accorded a traditional dissonance, a diminished sonority, normative status via repetition and prolongation).
Whatever the controversies of the production, there were glories galore elsewhere. It is worth starting this time not with the singing but with the pit, and the miracles conjured by the evening’s other sorcerer, Jakub Hrůša. The RBO Orchestra took technical excellence – near-perfection – as the minimum for a performance of infinite range, from the gentlest of string caressings to the most monumental,ritualistic brass to the tenderest of woodwind solos, particularly from the oboe. Tempos were perfectly judged (this was overall a relatively rapid Parsifal) – it moved, but never felt rushed. Hrůša’s clarity of baton is stunning. There was just one moment that raised an eyebrow: He took the Flowermaiden’s scene (‘Komm, komm, holde Knabe) in six, and the result was somewhat lumpy, the reverse of Wagner’s intent, surely; and yet, Kundry’s Herzeleide Narrative (‘Ich sah das Kind’) was in a more fluid two. But, my, how lucky are we to have him: Hrůša shaped the drama superbly, with a real feeling of acts One and Three as two structural pillars containing the more overt drama of act Two.
So, then, to the singing. Stanislas de Barbeyrac has impressed multiply in the past, not least as Florestan Fidelio (Insula, both Paris and London), as Max Freischütz in Aix and London (Insula, again) and, most recently, as Siegmund Walküre at RBO (review). He is a world-class titular hero, nuanced, untiring. He looks the part, too, youthful enough for his Fool-ish innocence to be believable in his first act exchanges with Gurnemanz. Acting goes hand-in-hand with musical excellence here, giving extra charge to his act Two scene with Kundry, here Ekaterina Gubanova (who has previously impressed at Covent Garden as Venus Tannhäuser in 2023, and as Neris Medea at the Met the previous year). Her Kundry was, perhaps, less impressive: while the aggressive nature of her opening ‘Parsifal, weile’ might well have been a conscious decision (given the mirroring force of ‘Gelobte Held’), ‘Bekenntnis, wird Schuld …’ went for absolutely nothing, emotionally.
Brindley Sherratt’s Gurnemanz was a masterclass of storytelling in his long narrations, gripping from first to last, only some strain and thinning of tone in his upper register a small issue. But this is a nuanced assumption that rivals John Tomlinson in this role (surely there is no higher praise).
When Christian Gerhaher presented his Wolfram Tannhäuser here in 2016 (under Hartmut Haenchen), he impressively brought a Lieder-singer’s resonance with text to the part. This, though, was a stage beyond, an interpretation of Amfortas surely to be remembered for decades to come. The staging asks for his vulnerability (he is naked for the bathing) and depictions of extreme pain, and how Gerhaher delivers. His voice is perfect, too, for the role: raw yet somehow infinitely beautiful and capable of myriad shadings of pain.
The besuited Mark Stone was a smarmy, repellant Klingsor, a modern representation of evil as opposed to some primordial archetype, James Platt a fine, sepulchral Titurel. And all credit to the more collective roles: the enthusiastic Squires (here sung by two female and two male voices, Elizabeth Karani, Lily Mo Browne, Georgi Guliashvili and Emyr Lloyd Jones), the troupe of Flowermaidens, who created an appropriately seductive web of sound, perfectly balanced both within themselves and in the individual brief solos, and the enquiring Knights (Ryan Vaughan Davies and Jack Sandison).
A stimulating evening, beyond doubt. Titov’s staging, packed with ideas, certainly gives lots to think about, while the subversive close causes this Parsifal to resonate on somewhat differently from the norm. The evening as a whole, though, augurs well for Hrůša’s tenure.
Photo The Royal Opera © 2026 Marc Brenner