Daniel Barenboim, The Staatskapelle Berlin - Richard Wagner: Parsifal (2015) [2x DVD9]

Wagner’s Parsifal is about redemption and renewal, but this new production by Russian director Dmitri Tcherniakov adds a jarring note — revenge. Those who saw his Simon Boccanegra for the English National Opera, where Amelia refuses to embrace her dying father, may not be surprised – but I was.
In Wagner’s conception, Kundry dies in the last moments, her sins redeemed by Parsifal, but in Tcherniakov’s interpretation she gets a knife in the back from the kindly old knight Gurnemanz.
This is a director long on ideas, and Act I was sublime. Daniel Barenboim in the pit and René Pape as a superb Gurnemanz gave the music, singing and staging a thrilling coherence. There was effortless simplicity in the journey to the Grail, where “space becomes time”, and Titurel entered and exited in a dual state: in a coffin, yet also tall and commanding in a black leather coat.
The Grail itself, a chalice filled with holy water and blood from the wound of Amfortas, provided glorious renewal as the knights drank from it — a sort of reverse transubstantiation.
In Act III emotions were palpable. Gurnemanz almost collapses after anointing Parsifal, and the deathless knights – bearded and unkempt, like the Flying Dutchman’s ghostly crew – form a melee around Amfortas. Parsifal and the spear bring redemption and renewal, so why is Kundry murdered?