Valery Gergiev conducts Wagner's Parsifal

With the generous support of Madame Aline Foriel-Destezet

“Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra touch the Holy Grail”: that’s how T. Labouret (bachtrack.com) described their performance of Wagner’s Parsifal at the Philharmonie de Paris last September. When one considers their groundbreaking Russian premiere of the opera in 1997 and their landmark 2010 CD recording, it becomes clear that Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra have written essential chapters in the opera’s performance history. This webcast streamed live from Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts follows in the footsteps of interpretations by Karajan, Boulez, and Barenboim.

Described by the composer as a “sacred stage festival”, Parsifal’s libretto draws on some of the most disruptive philosophical trends of Wagner’s age (Schopenhauer in particular), mixing Christian and Buddhist religious precepts in a luminous and profound musical discourse of extraordinary purity.