Olafur Sigurdarson

A young man ignorant of everything, including his own name, arrives at the Kingdom of the Holy Grail. Is he the ‘pure fool, enlightened by compassion’, who, it has been prophesied, will purify the realm? OperaVision is live from Bergen for a concert staging of Parsifal, Richard Wagner’s final music drama which is unlike anything that went before or has come since. It can feel more like a ritual ceremony than an opera – grand yet intimate, somehow occupying its own space and time. At the heart of Parsifal is a curious, magical treatment of the symphony orchestra that appears to give the voices above it all the space and autonomy they need.

Production Bayreuth 2024. There is no arrival in Tristan and Isolde, only the longing for the unattainable, for the place “where the end of deception promised me my heart”. Two people who strive to fall out of the roles ascribed to them, to escape the supposed lies of the day. Two people suffering from life, whose declaration of love consists of wanting to restore a moment that has irretrievably passed. Two nocturnal devotees who, in their regressive desire to be uplifted and completely abandon themselves, lose touch with reality and who, in their desire to abandon their ego to another and escape their own history, ultimately fail themselves. “To long to die, not to die of longing.”