圣杯、伤口、长矛：瓦格纳最后一部歌剧中的这些元素显然具有象征意义。而其他元素——女性、救世主、贞洁、诱惑、苦难、死亡——则较难界定，它们介于字面意义与隐喻之间。瓦格纳为这部作品谱写的乐谱堪称其最迷人、最光彩夺目的创作；评论家们则反复探讨其中所体现的种族纯洁论、厌女倾向以及宗教色彩。叶夫根尼·季托夫为皇家歌剧院执导的首部作品提出了一个问题：我们是否真的相信《帕西法尔》所讲述的故事——堕落、诅咒以及通过纯洁实现救赎——如果我们愿意相信，这又意味着什么呢？
Grail, wound, spear: some of the narrative trappings of Wagner’s final opera are immediately recognisable as symbolic. Others – woman, saviour, chastity, seduction, suffering, death – are harder to pin down, lodged in the half-light between the literal and the metaphorical. Wagner’s score is his most beguilingly luminous; its critics have pored over the work’s commitment to racial purity, its misogyny, its religiosity. The question that Evgeny Titov’s debut production for the Royal Opera poses is whether we really believe in the story Parsifal tells – the fall, the curse, the redemption through purity – and what it means if we want to.
季托夫的舞台呈现尽可能少做解释。在艾蒂安·普卢斯的布景设计中，圣杯王国是一个由巨大石块砌成的地下掩体，这些石块缓缓在舞台上移动。现场设有监控屏幕与脏污不堪的洗手间，堕落之王阿姆福塔斯便在那里由戴着呼吸装置的圣杯骑士们为他擦洗身体。服装设计师埃丝特·比亚拉斯让骑士们身着羽绒服。昆德丽（象征着处女与妓女的双重身份）起初穿着黑色皮衣，后来则换上了纯白色的服饰。
Titov’s staging explains as little as possible. In Etienne Pluss’s sets, the grail realm is an underground bunker hewn from monumental stone blocks that trundle slowly around the stage. There are CCTV screens and a grimy washroom where Amfortas – the fallen King – is scrubbed down by Grail Knights in breathing apparatus. Costume designer Esther Bialas has the Knights in anoraks. Kundry (the virgin-whore dichotomy incarnate) wears black leathers at first, virginal white later.
在一个少有的直白表现场景中，帕西法尔抱着自己射杀的天鹅登场，天鹅还在无力地扭动，直到乐队的演奏宣告了它的死亡。
In a rare moment of literal-mindedness, Titov has Parsifal arrive holding the swan he has shot, which twitches gawkily until the orchestra heralds its demise.
邪恶的克林索尔的王国同样是个地下掩体——这里没有什么魔法花园，只有一套喧闹刺耳的音响设备、一部用来发号施令的电话、更多布满地板上蜿蜒如蛇的电线的屏幕，以及陈列着他珍宝的柜子：一具埃及木乃伊、一顶王冠以及那支神圣的长矛。（在该制作中另一个不太成功的细节是：帕西法尔用一种塑料般的生硬声响击碎“玻璃”去取回长矛。）
Evil Klingsor’s kingdom is another bunker – no enchanted garden here, just a loud suit, a telephone for barking orders, more screens with wiring that curls serpentlike across the floor and cabinets displaying his treasures: an Egyptian mummy, a crown, the sacred spear. (In another of the production’s less convincing details, Parsifal breaks the “glass” to retrieve the spear with an unsatisfying plastic crunch.)
我们最初看到的花仙子们是一群令人不安的小女孩，她们在克林索尔的巢穴中追逐嬉戏。而她们成年后的形象则是戴着头饰、穿着银色热裤的女性机器人，她们既是合唱团成员，又带有《使女的故事》中的影子。这种效果显得十分怪诞——但在2026年，又怎会不是如此呢？
We first encounter the flower maidens as a disturbing gaggle of little girls chasing around Klingsor’s lair. Their grown-up counterparts are fembots in headdresses and silver hot pants, part chorus line, part Handmaid’s Tale. The effect is grotesque – but how could it be otherwise in 2026?
部分舞台布景以及诸多精妙的灯光设计都借鉴了宗教绘画的表现手法。另一些细节则引人深思：比如在圣杯仪式中用于束缚阿姆福塔斯的皮制绑带，还有昆德丽蜷缩其上的金属妇科检查椅。剧中不乏温情脉脉的瞬间，但在充斥着隐晦乃至直露暴力场面的氛围中，这些时刻显得格外震撼。
Some of the stage pictures and much of the subtle lighting designs riff on the language of religious painting. Other details raise questions rather than answering them: the leather restraining straps used on Amfortas during the grail ritual, the metal gynaecological chair in which Kundry cowers. Moments of physical tenderness stand out, shocking amid so much implied and – in Titov’s remarkable closing coup de théâtre – explicit violence.
这部作品的魅力还离不开出色的音乐演绎——在诸多暧昧难辨的情节中，音乐始终传递着美感与强烈的情感张力。指挥雅库布·赫鲁沙巧妙地驾驭着瓦格纳宏大的乐谱：他会在某些乐段间留出停顿，又在其他地方以迅疾的节奏推进。乐团的表现堪称卓越：木管乐器时而轻盈如羽、时而甜美柔润、时而发出痛楚的哀鸣；弦乐则时而如绸缎般柔滑、时而如利刃般尖锐；铜管乐器音色崭新而饱满，有时更融合成一种庄严且宛如管风琴般的恢弘音响。
This production’s power also depends on the musical performance, which threaded beauty and emotional intensity through so much equivocation. Conductor Jakub Hrůša charted long lines through Wagner’s enormous score, taking time between some musical paragraphs and pushing precipitously onwards elsewhere. The orchestra was on superb form – woodwind featherweight or saccharine or keening painfully, the strings producing sound alternately in reams of satin and razor-sharp shards, the brass foundry-fresh – at times blending into a single, majestically organ-like tintinnabulation.
布林德利·谢拉特塑造的贡纳曼茨形象复杂而富有层次——尽管高音区偶尔略显生硬，但整体表现依然极具感染力，其叙事能力也一如既往地出色。叶卡捷琳娜·古巴诺娃饰演的昆德丽形象变幻多端，嗓音反应灵敏，从尖叫到近乎人声的诉说皆信手拈来，那些精心雕琢的乐句仿佛在乐团的旋律表面轻盈游走。马克·斯通演绎的克林索尔既圆滑世故又充满凶悍之气；詹姆斯·普拉特塑造的蒂图雷尔则威严庄重，恰如其分。
Brindley Sherratt was a moody, complicated Gurnemanz – some nasty high notes standing out against his granite lower – but his storytelling was as compelling as ever. Ekaterina Gubanova was a constantly shapeshifting Kundry, her tone reactive, from shrieks to quasi-speech, via finely sculpted phrases that seemed to skim the orchestra’s surface. Mark Stone’s Klingsor managed to be both oleaginous and fierce, James Platt’s Titurel appropriately stentorian.
斯坦尼斯拉斯·德·巴贝拉克以如钢铁般铿锵有力的嗓音担纲主角，起初略显零散的演唱方式在终场时逐渐升华为有力且流畅的宣叙调。而真正让这部作品成为不容错过的经典的，则是克里斯蒂安·格尔哈尔所演绎的那个凄惨至极、眼神狂乱的阿姆福塔斯——在这段对自我沉溺的冷峻刻画中，他唱出的每一个音符都浸透着痛苦，每一句唱词都令人难以忘怀。
Stanislas de Barbeyrac wielded his gleaming steel of a voice on the title role, his earlier fragmentary mode blossoming into potent, supple declamation in the final scene. But it is Christian Gerhaher’s appalling, wild-eyed Amfortas that makes this production a must-see. In this bleak portrayal of self-obsession, every note he sang oozed misery, every phrase felt unmissable.