Zagreb’s Wagner Casts Its Spell

Richard Wagner: Parsifal

Amfortas: Davor Radić; Titurel: Ivica Trubić; Gurnemanz: Claudius Muth; Parsifal: John Charles Pierce; Klingsor: Anton Keremidchiev; Kundry: Dubravka Šeparović Mušović; Conductor: Saša Britvić; Director: Kurt Josef Schildknecht; Set Design: Rudolf Rischer; Costume Design: Gera Graf; Lighting Design: Roger Vanoni

They have accomplished this first and foremost by assembling a cast of superlative singers, with pride of place going to the intriguing Kundry as impersonated by Dubravka Šeparović Mušović. She is an artist of great imagination and infinite variety. In Act One, she is a displaced street person, in Two a glamorous seductress who seems on the verge of a nervous breakdown as she vacillates between being Klingsor’s willing accomplice and a penitent in search of redemption. Free-wheeling moments of unbridled lust give way to nervous, guilty tics and stomach-churning disgust (for the character, not us). This was a valid, fully engaged, undeniably schizophrenic take on the character and Ms. Mušović wholly owned it.Nor did she stint in the vocal arena as she let loose with an awesome arsenal of well-calculated effects including a smoldering low voice, searing top, well knit registers, tenderly caressed phrasings, and superbly controlled dynamics, remarkably all of a piece. There was not a moment that she was not invested in the emotional truth of Kundry’s musical lines as she fully immersed herself in a highly personal traversal of one of opera’s most complex characters.

James Sohre