Evgeny Titov's Dystopian Parsifal Opens at Royal Ballet and Opera in London

Evgeny Titov stages Richard Wagner's Parsifal as a post-apocalyptic bunker drama for a new production that premiered at the Royal Ballet and Opera in London on 1 October and runs through 17 October. After the prelude, the curtain rises on a subterranean world of industrial haze, decaying shelters, military showers and surveillance gear, with CCTV cameras and monitors filling the stage. Titov strips Wagner's own libretto of much of its imagery: Klingsor's enchanted garden and the third act's Good Friday Spell are gone, while the spear and a breathing kitsch swan remain, and the Grail survives as an ordinary instrument rather than a singular object. Stanislas de Barbeyrac sings the title role, Ekaterina Gubanova is Kundry, Christian Gerhaher is Amfortas, Mark Stone is Klingsor, James Platt is Titurel and Brindley Sherratt is Gurnemanz, who completed the evening despite an announced indisposition. Jakub Hrůša, the house's new music director, conducts the Royal Ballet and Opera orchestra. In the second act the Flower Maidens become hypersexualised fembots in a damp concrete bunker, and Kundry appears first as a punk dark lady in leather trousers and black feather capes, then as a virginal figure in a white slip who washes Parsifal's feet with her hair. Etienne Pluss designed the sets, Esther Bialas the costumes, D. M. Wood the lighting and Christopher Ash the video. Houses were nearly full for every performance despite tickets approaching £400.