MET OPERA: Wagner’s Parsifal

About this event

ArtSpring – Theatre. The Met: Live in HD is your chance to join thousands of others in theatres and cinemas around the world, to experience one of the world’s most famous opera companies livestream direct from New York. Here at Salt Spring, not only do you get to experience ArtSpring’s exceptional surround sound, but also our Quiche intermissions – which have helped make Saturday morning opera a Salt Spring institution. In addition to the opera itself, there are live interviews with the stars, and behind-the scenes live backstage footage. A profound philosophical meditation on compassion and reconciliation, this transcendent rendering of a medieval knight’s heroic quest for the Holy Grail returns to the big screen in François Girard’s celebrated production, a “thoughtful and intrepid staging, full of striking imagery” (The New York Times). Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts a cast of Wagnerian superstars, including tenor Piotr Beczała in the title role, mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča as the enigmatic Kundry, baritone Peter Mattei as the ailing Amfortas, bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green as the sorcerer Klingsor, and bass Jongmin Park as the wise Gurnemanz. First performed in 1882, Wagner’s final opera is a musical journey unlike any other. The composer preferred to call his mature works “music dramas,” but he set Parsifal even further apart by naming it a Bühnenweihfestspiel, a “festival play for the consecration of a stage”—the stage in question being that of his Bayreuth Festival House.