Opera by Bernhard Lang based on Richard Wagner’s “Parsifal”
With Jonathan Meese, Bernhard Lang, Simone Young

Even Nietzsche did not envision Wagner as a prophet of the future, as he may have wanted to seem, but as an interpreter and transfigurer of the past. Consequently, at the German premiere of “MONDPARSIFAL BETA 9–23 (VON EINEM, DER AUSZOG DEN “WAGNERIANERN DES GRAUENS” DAS “GEILSTGRUSELN” ZU ERZLEHREN…)”, we should not expect an act of imitation, but rather a fusion of work by visual artist Jonathan Meese and composer Bernhard Lang, who have transposed the Wagnerian myth onto a distant revolutionary year in the future. Parsifal, Kundry, Klingsor and other protagonists in Wagner’s world of mythical figures meet on a lunar base inhabited by Wagner himself as well as German-Italian hit singer Fancy, Marlon Brando, Zardoz, the Wicker Man and Barbarella. Buddha meets Crowley! An electrified Eagle transporter hovers over the scene, consisting of a huge Thanksgiving straw doll, which Grail Movement supporters wait tirelessly to be unveiled. However, in the meantime, something has radically changed...

Parsifal and Wagner are the force fields that unite the past and the future in the present, which takes the form of an opera spacecraft in a deluge of citations. Bernhard Lang closely follows the libretto and the structure of Wagner’s opera but creates a completely new sound and cosmos of meaning. Jonathan Meese, whose individual mythological art world is closely linked to Wagner, has designed the direction, set and costumes and will remodel the Haus der Berliner Festspiele into an alternative version of Bayreuth’s Green Hill, and turns it into a theatre in a parallel galaxy for this event. “Slice Me Nice”, Fancy’s hit song, is its slogan!

Commissioned and produced by Wiener Festwochen
Coproduction Berliner Festspiele / Immersion

German, English, French and Ancient Greek with German surtitles

Duration: approx. 200 minutes, 2 breaks

Sun 15 Oct 2017, 18:00 Tickets
Mon 16 Oct 2017, 19:00 Tickets
Wed 18 Oct 2017, 19:00 Tickets