Matthew Ozawa’s production reimagines Wagner’s final masterpiece as a journey of compassion and awakening
For the first time in twenty-five years, Parsifal returns to the stage of San Francisco Opera in a new production directed by Matthew Ozawa and conducted by Eun Sun Kim, the company’s music director. Wagner’s final opera, often described as his most spiritual work, becomes under their vision a meditation on compassion, faith, and transformation.
Ozawa’s staging, as he explained in a director’s note published on the company’s website, embraces “a multicultural theatrical language—drawing from both Western and Eastern traditions, as well as diverse religious rituals and movement forms.” Rejecting the idea of a single religious or historical frame, the production seeks to “invite audiences to step outside the everyday and into a shared space of reflection, empathy, and awakening.”
The creative team includes Robert Innes Hopkins (sets), Jessica Jahn (costumes), Yuki Nakase Link (lighting), and Rena Butler (choreography), whose work blends ritual gestures from Noh, Butoh, and Christian liturgy. The result, according to Butler, is an “eclectic and abstract movement vocabulary that bridges the human and the divine.”
Eun Sun Kim’s Wagnerian journey
As noted in an article by Jeffery S. McMillan on San Francisco Opera’s official site, Parsifal continues Kim’s multi-year exploration of Wagner’s music following her acclaimed Lohengrin (2023) and Tristan und Isolde (2024). The conductor described the work as “a big goal for any conductor—every note, every measure is just perfect.”
Kim’s commitment to Wagner parallels her ongoing dialogue with Verdi and Beethoven, and she sees Parsifal as a culmination of her artistic evolution. “I was an assistant conductor for Parsifal when I was very young,” she recalled, “and whether I was assisting or actively conducting, I was always full of admiration for this score.”
A cast of seasoned Wagnerians
The production brings together an ensemble of artists with deep experience in the composer’s repertoire. Brandon Jovanovich, a frequent presence at the War Memorial Opera House, takes on the title role after recent performances as Siegmund and Lohengrin. In an interview for the San Francisco Opera website, Jovanovich described Parsifal as “a beautiful meditation” that can “change your perception of the world.”
He is joined by Tanja Ariane Baumgartner as Kundry, Brian Mulligan as Amfortas, Kwangchul Youn as Gurnemanz, and Falk Struckmann as Klingsor—each an established interpreter of Wagner’s universe.
Compassion, faith, and the passage of time
The new Parsifal also resonates with reflections on time and attention in contemporary life. In an essay by Jenny Odell for the company’s website, the author contrasts Wagner’s vast musical canvas with the fleeting rhythms of the digital age. She proposes that Parsifal invites audiences to enter “Wagner time”—a space beyond the economy of minutes and screens, where music becomes a portal to contemplation.
This idea finds a philosophical echo in Paul Schofield’s contribution to the same series, which situates Parsifal within Wagner’s synthesis of Christian, Buddhist, and pagan symbolism. Schofield recalls the composer’s belief that art could preserve the spiritual essence of religion, “grasping the symbolic value of its mythic symbols” rather than their literal meaning.
A festival play for the present
Wagner called Parsifal a Bühnenweihfestspiel—a “stage-consecration festival play.” In San Francisco, Ozawa and Kim reinterpret that consecration as a collective act of empathy. “At a time when the world seems increasingly fractured,” Ozawa writes, “Parsifal speaks directly to the crisis of disconnection so many of us feel. Its music and message reach into something primal—a longing for healing and for meaning.
Performances and livestream
Parsifal runs at San Francisco Opera from 25 October to 13 November 2025, with performances in German and English supertitles.
The production is also available to watch online through San Francisco Opera’s livestream platform with individual livestream tickets priced at $25.
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