I’m afraid I’m getting a line on Nézet-Séguin. I’ve heard him four times now, in a reasonable cross-section of repertory—Carmen, Don Carlo, Der fliegende Holländer, and Parsifal—and have yet to be roused or shaken, or made to feel that he has penetrated beyond the surface characteristics of any of these musics. The best moments I’ve heard have come in up-tempo passages where a propulsive energy can carry us along and the drama is playing out in overt outer actions—Act 3 of Holländer (if Holländer had acts anymore), with its thudding dances, lusty choruses, and fevered final confrontation, was the most successful extended passage I’ve heard from him. Accordingly, the best sequences in his Parsifal came in Act 2, with the lilting Flower Maidens and the excitable final ten minutes or so. For the rest, he seemed to resist becoming enmeshed in the motival webbing, with its constant melodic and harmonic  interplay, its episodes in need of destination, profile, and accent. A single example, from one of my favorite progressions, will have to serve. It’s near the beginning of the Act 3 Prelude where, after the desolate opening bars that prefigure Titurel’s funeral dirge, there’s a passage derived from music we’ve just heard (a part of Kundry’s “Ride” motif)—her threat/prediction that by rejecting her, Parsifal dooms himself to an eternity of aimless wandering, not unlike her own fate. As sung by Kundry, it staggers wildly, as if stumbling up a dizzying slope (a tough spot vocally, especially when mezzos take the role). Now we hear a more gradual, broken variation, the violins limping upward into their chromatic finish while the lower strings head down in contrary motion. It tells us that Parsifal has indeed set off on a journey of many obstacles and mistaken paths, and has the feel of a repeated halting motion that seeks to press on through but never quite makes it. It might be conveyed by a touch of stentato, or a hint of crescendo at the top, or even the reverse of that—the feel of a vanishing wisp. The Met’s strings played it pleasingly, evenly, and meaninglessly.

Anytime an orchestra and chorus of middling-or-better quality has been assembled and rehearsed and the singers are at least listenable, some of Parsifal is going to get through—sort of the equivalent of the “replacement-level player” that baseball analysts like Bill James talk about—and Parsifal being Parsifal, that’s going to amount to something more than your ordinary long evening. But this reading made a poor showing after Gatti’s in the production’s premiere run. Gatti gave us bone and sinew; Nézet-Séguin, some nicely toned skin.

And there is the production to consider. It has been highly and widely praised, and deservedly so in terms of skill, invention, and technical command.^(I) Further, it’s been well maintained: I detected no physical deterioration, or any slippage in the tight discipline it requires. There remains, nevertheless, the question of whether or not it’s a good idea to begin with. Since for me this question (which needs to be asked of all “conceptual” productions) has reduced itself to one of principle that is almost bound to be answered “I think not,” let me simply describe what’s present. The particulars of this occasion for thinking “not” will present themselves immediately.