ABOUT THE WORK
ParZeFool - Der Thumbe Thor (2016)
Music theater for voices, choir, ensemble and 2 Jazz musicians  
after Richard Wagner‘s Parsifal
Duration: 200'
View score


PERFORMANCES
Vienna (Wiener Festwochen): June 4, 6 and 8, 2017
Berlin (Festival Immersion, Berliner Festspiele): October 15, 16 and 18, 2017
Klanforum Wien
Simone Young (conductor)
Jonathan Meese (stage director)


INTERVIEWS
Bernhard Lang about ParZeFool
Interview: Simone Young about ParZeFool


PRESS REVIEWS

Zeit
06.06.2017
„The highlight of the Wiener Festwochen 2017.” 

BR Klassik
08.06.2017
“The art-religious cult opera gets ventilated in a wonderful and strange way that is free of any taboos.”

Deutschlandfunk Kultur
05.06.2017
„Of course, Meese’s messy universe would appear very inconsistent during a normal performance of Parsifal, but fortunately there is the composer Bernhard Lang who dissolves Wagner’s music in dynamic loops and virtuoso overlay. That sounds so relaxed and jazzy, one immediately feels like shaking a leg.”

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
06.06.2017
„What Lang accomplishes with the music of “Parsifal” is quasi an affectionate deconstruction, an “overpainting” as he himself calls it. “ParZeFool” is closely related to the original. Much just seems as if he would have cut Wagner’s score into short, still evident fragments to recomposing them afterwards.” 

Der Tagesspiegel
06.06.2017
“So it has become an entirely new work. This was also due to Bernhard Lang’s music. The music circulates around Richard Wagner, sometimes she seems more distant to him, sometimes she gets very close in individual motifs or even copies directly. Lang’s most important musical mean is to insist, to repeat constantly. The orchestra and soloist are quasi clinging on singular words and phrases through many bars searching for the “behind”, the essence. Percussion is of key importance because this “Mondparsifal” is a jazz opera, too.”

taz - Die Tageszeitung 
06.06.2017
„Redemption to the Redeemer? Lang encounters this Wagnerian subject by seeking rather the redemption from the Redeemer and by layering a new musical object on the original work. That is – regardless of the musicological level – intellectually enjoyable.” 

Photos: Jan Bauer, courtesy of Jonathan Meese