Happy birthday, Richard Wagner!
It was sometime around 1983 or ’84 that my best buddy from high school and I determined to catch a screening of Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s “Parsifal” at Lehigh University. Neither of us knew much about the opera at that point, but we both loved the film “Excalibur” and were at the very least familiar with the mystical prelude Wagner had composed.
As my friend climbed into the car, he commented, “I think we’re in for a real treat. Listen to this!” Then he read to me the synopsis from Kobbé’s or Milton Cross or the equivalent. When he reached the part where Parsifal snatches Klingsor’s spear out of midair, destroying his power, we were both like, “Whoaaa.” We were ready for some serious action!
When we arrived, we learned that the film was being presented in an auditorium with a raked floor. I remember it was raked, because at some point during the showing, an empty bottle of spirits rolled down past our feet, clanking against the chair legs as it went.
The film was presented the old-fashioned way, on a projector, pre-digital, so periodically the tail leader would run out and the lights would have to be switched on, so that the reels could be changed. Along the way, there were also a few technical difficulties, significantly padding the film’s already four-hour-plus running time.
Anyway, it was excruciating – which is to say, we enjoyed ourselves mightily. There was so much to laugh at and groan through. The actor who played Klingsor was totally out of shape. When he raised his spear, he must have had an aneurysm or something, because instead of hurling it like a javelin, as described in Kobbé, he simply tumbled into a ravine. We were especially amused by the revelation toward the end that the entire production was supposed to have taken place inside a gigantic bust of Wagner.
Otherwise, Syberberg’s was a fairly straightforward interpretation, though curiously he chose to have actors stand in for the singers on the film’s soundtrack, a decision I can’t say made it any less silly. Oh yeah, there was also a passage, just before the “bust” revelation, that had knights proceeding down a long stone hallway, lined with swastika flags (???). Obviously, this was a work of genius.
By the time it finally ended, and someone switched on the lights for probably the sixth or seventh time, we staggered out of the building, wearing conspiratorial grins, only to discover a fog had rolled in. It was now ludicrously late. Driving back on Route 22 was like crossing the North Sea in a dragon boat.
When I arrived home, it was around 2:00 in the morning, and my mother was on pins and needles. What happened? What had we gotten up to? I shared a mercifully abridged account of our Wagnerian adventure. We were not dead in a ditch. Nor were we rotting in a police cell. We were merely watching “Parsifal.”
Why is this film, presented by Francis Ford Coppola, not available on DVD???