Wagner's Parsifal [1 ed.] 9780984559978

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Parsifal Bühnenweihfestspiel in German in three acts

Music by Richard Wagner

Libretto by Richard Wagner after Parzivâl and Titurel poems of Wolfram von Eschenbach

Premiere: Bayreuth, Festspielhaus, July 1882

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Principal Characters in Parsifal Amfortas, ruler of the Kingdom of the Grail Titurel, his father Gurnemanz, a veteran Knight of the Grail Parsifal Klingsor, a magician Kundry First and Second Knights of the Grail Four Esquires Voice from Above Klingsor’s Flower-maidens

Baritone Bass Bass Tenor Bass Mezzo-soprano Tenor, Bass Sopranos, Tenors Contralto 6 Sopranos

Knights of the Grail, youths and boys, flower-maidens TIME: Mythological times PLACE: The Grail Castle of Monsalvat and its environs in the northern mountains of Spain

Brief Story Synopsis Parsifal takes place on a mountain range in Spain. Many years earlier, the sacred Holy Grail and the Sacred Spear were placed under the guardianship of Titurel and his Christian knights; the relics are protected by the knights in the fortified castle of Monsalvat in pagan Spain. Living nearby are the evil sorcerer Klingsor, and the enchantress Kundry, enemies of the Christian knights. Titurel consecrated Monsalvat as a holy temple in which the Grail Knights guard the chalice used at the Last Supper; it is revered as the holiest relic of Christianity. Joseph of Arimathea used the chalice to capture blood from the side of the crucified Christ after the Roman soldier Longinus pierced Him with the Spear during the Crucifixion. Each year a white dove descends from heaven to renew the Grail with miraculous powers, and to stimulate the knights to feats of bravery in the cause of salvation. Only those who are chaste through spiritual introspection may participate in the ritual of the unveiling of the Grail by Titurel’s son Amfortas, the present king. The castle of Klingsor lies on the southern slope of the mountain, facing heathen Spain. Klingsor was once a pious hermit, but he was unable to suppress sinful desires through prayer and reflection, and even though he castrated himself, he was judged unworthy of the Grail Brotherhood and subsequently spurned by them. Klingsor has become a bitter enemy of the knights and seethes with revenge. In his determination to possess the Grail and the Sacred Spear, Klingsor has embraced paganism and the dark magical arts. He has inhabited a magnificent garden with beautiful and seductive flower-maidens, who tempt the knights to forbidden pleasures; the knights fall into Klingsor’s evil power, trapped by the very forces they have learned to suppress. Klingsor has absolute power over Kundry, a link between the two worlds of good and evil. She has been cursed because at Calvary, she laughed at the suffering Christ, and ever since has vainly yearned for deliverance through death, but she has been condemned to wander the earth in despair

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as she seeks absolution from her sin. She leads a double existence: she functions as a decoy and prostitute in Klingsor’s realm, and also as a repentant slave in the kingdom of the Grail. Amfortas set out with the Sacred Spear to destroy the evil Klingsor. But he was seduced by Kundry, and while in her embrace, Klingsor stole the Spear and wounded Amfortas in his side. Amfortas’ wound refuses to heal, and he is tormented by excruciating pain and suffering, which can only be relieved by the touch of the Sacred Spear. A Prophecy from the sanctuary of the Grail predicted that Amfortas can only be relieved of his pain by a “holy fool,” unaware of sin, and capable of resisting Kundry. The Prophecy is fulfilled by Parsifal, a guileless youth charged with killing a holy swan. After it is learned that the boy is innocent of the crime and entirely ignorant of the world, he is selected to rescue the Holy Spear. Parsival triumphs. He heals Amfortas with the Sacred Spear, and is anointed King of the Grail Knights. Amfortas and the knights kneel in homage to Parsifal as he baptizes Kundry, who is at last redeemed by her peaceful death.

Prelude The Prelude begins with a broadly phrased theme:

The theme contains three significant elements that are generally associated with the Eucharest, or Communion; Suffering, or Anxiety; and the Sacred Spear. Eucharest, or Communion:

Anguish, or Suffering:

Sacred Spear:

Holy Grail (“Dresden Amen”)

Faith:

Story Narrative with Music Highlight Examples Act I – Scene 1: on a mountain peak in medieval Spain It is early morning. Gurnemanz, a veteran knight of the Grail, awakens from his slumber. He observes two knights descending the mountain from the Castle of Monsalvat; they are bearing the ailing King Amfortas, bound for the Holy Lake. Gurnemanz expresses hope that the morning bath will bring comfort to Amfortas. The knights with Gurnemanz are reproachful, well aware that Amfortas’ wound is incurable. In his sorrow, Gurnemanz comments that there is but one man who can help Amfortas, but he evades further queries from the knights and orders them to tend to the bath. Suddenly, the knights and esquires cry out in excitement as a wild rider hastens toward them at breathless speed. It is Kundry! Kundry’s arrival

Kundry dismounts — a fantastic character, ageless, and with dark skin and black disheveled hair. When Titurel built Monsalvat, he found Kundry sleeping in the bushes. She performs errands of mercy for the knights, but speaks little. She has just returned from Arabia where she secured a healing balsam for Amfortas’ wound. She thrusts the vial towards Gurnemanz, and overcome with weariness, sinks to the ground. A procession of attendants descends the hill with the ailing Amfortas, borne on a littler. Amfortas descends on a litter

Upon seeing Gurnemanz, the king bids his attendants halt. He exclaims that he has spent another night in anguish, and expresses his wish for death as his only release from pain and suffering. Gurnemanz offers the king the soothing balsam that Kundry has brought. He gratefully accepts it and goes off toward the lake. The young esquires turn on Kundry and complain that she lies on the ground like a threatening beast. Gurnemanz quickly protects her, declaring that she has always helped the knights: that it is only when she disappears that evil falls upon the Brotherhood. The esquires challenge Gurnemanz by inquiring why he does not send her out to recapture the Holy Spear? Gurnemanz claims that the redeeming the Holy Spear to Monsalvat is beyond her capabilities. He proceeds to relate the story of the evil Klingsor’s attempt to join the chaste Brotherhood. Amfortas fell prey to an enchantress in Klingsor’s magic Flower-Garden; while in her embrace Klingsor seized the Sacred Spear and then inflicted a wound to Amfortas’ side. The wound has never healed, and Amfortas lives with the one hope that he will be saved by the fulfillment of a Prophecy once heard in the silence of the temple.

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Prophecy

Four young esquires softly repeat the promising words of the Prophecy. But their meditations are shattered by a wounded swan circling overhead. It flies desperately away from the lake, and then drops to the earth, dead. Wild shouts are heard in the distance; the knights come forth dragging a defiant youth with them. Gurnemanz stares sadly at the dead swan, and then at the swaggering youth, who flaunts a bow and arrow. Gurnemanz rashly condemns the youth’s foolhardy murder of the swan, who becomes so overcome with shame that he breaks his bow and arrow and casts the pieces away. Gurnemanz inquires who the boy is? And where he comes from? Parsifal Motive

The lad’s only response is, “I do not know!” As Gurnemanz observes the youth, he wonders if perhaps he is the guileless fool of Amfortas’ Prophecy? Gurnemanz bids his fellow knights remove the body of the swan. After they have gone, the lad reveals that he has a mother named “Brokenheart”; that they once lived on the edge of the forest. Kundry springs up from the ground. In her endless travels she has witnessed many things — and she knows the youth’s history: that his mother tried to protect him from the world. Before he was born, his father was killed in battle, and to protect the boy from his father’s fate, she tried to shield him from armor and battle. The lad reveals that after seeing a band of men with shining weapons, and ever since, he has followed his destiny and fought everyone in his path in order to survive. Kundry reveals that his mother grieves no more: that she died of grief. The youth springs wildly at Kundry. He trembles with sorrow, and then faints. Kundry rushes to a nearby well and fetches water to revive him. Gurnemanz thanks her. Sleep begins to fill her eyes, a sign that Klingsor the magician is casting his spell from afar. If she succumbs, upon awakening she will be transformed into a beautiful seductress, using her wiles to lead the knights of the Grail astray. She disappears in a thicket of the forest. Gurnemanz decides to test the youth by having him witness the solemn service of the Grail. Indeed, this lad might be the guileless fool of the Prophecy.

Gurnemanz leads him toward the sacred hall accompanied by the music of Transformation: the first theme is the music Amfortas’ anguish (or the Cry to the Saviour); and the second suggests the chiming bells of the temple. Act I – Scene 2: Hall of the Grail The Knights of the Grail assemble about a vast altar. Amfortas is borne in to the hall on a litter. From a tomb-like crypt below the altar the old and feeble Titurel, living only through the sustenance that the Grail affords him, cries out to Amfortas to unveil the Grail. Amfortas pleads that the Grail remain unrevealed: all of the terrible implications of his sin and his spear-wound rise in the presence of the chalice. But finally, at the insistence of his father, he is forced to reveal the Grail. The hall is suffused with a soft glow: the bread and wine of the Eucharist that the knights hold become the body and blood of the Redeemer. At last, the Grail is extinguished — daylight returns to the hall — and Amfortas, his wound broken out anew, is borne away. The youth has been watching the ceremony in silent awe. As the knights depart, Gurnemanz inquires if he understands the significance of what he has seen? Sorrow has overcome the speechless youth. He lays his hand upon his heart — and then Gurnemanz; he has apparently failed to understand the gesture of pity and Gurnemanz drives him from the temple. As the knights return and kneel before the altar, a mysterious voice from above repeats the Prophecy: “Made wise through pity, the guileless fool — wait for him, my chosen one!” Act II – Scene 1: Klingsor’s Castle In the Prelude to Act II, destructive forces are at work: Klingsor’s Motive; and the theme of the Magic Slumber, to which Kundry is prey. Klingsor

Magic Slumber

Klingsor, the magician, is seated in his dark tower, about to summon Kundry from the void below and command her to seduce the guileless fool. Still sleeping, Kundry rises form the depths, heavy veils covering her body, and her face is ghostly white. With a shriek, she awakens. She whimpers in fear as she awaits Klingsor’s order: that she must lead him astray.

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Kundry rebels ineffectually, striving to atone for the sins of her past. But Klingsor’s will prevails. As Klingsor peers over the battlements of the castle. Watching the arrival of the guileless fool, Kundry sinks through the ground. She has already brough destruction to Amfortas — now she must corrupt the chosen redeemer! Act II – Scene 2: the Magic Gardens The strange youth, in his quest for adventure, has broken into Klingsor’s garden and wounded the magician’s effeminate knights. As he stands surveying the scene, he is surrounded by a group of flower-maidens. “Komm! Komm! Holder Knabe!

The youth resists their advances. Suddenly, from behind a hedge of the gardens floats a voice of extreme beauty, calling out, “Parsifal!” He recognizes the name which his mother once gave him. Kundry comes into view, reclining on a bed of flowers; she is an enchantress, dazzling to behold. As the maidens disappear, Kundry beckons Parsifal to her side, and tenderly relates the story of his mother, Brokenheart; and how she perished after grieving for her missing son. Parsifal cries out in dismay: “I have caused my mother’s death!” Kundry urges him to acknowledge his sin and grieve no more: that she brings him a kiss, his mother’s blessing. Kundry draws Parsifal to her and embraces him passionately. But Parsifal thrusts her away. He feels the same anguish he experienced on seeing Amfortas unveil the Grail: young Parsifal has learned compassion! In vain, Kundry relates her own tragic history: condemned to travel the world as Herodias, and lauging at the Redeemer on the Cross, now fated to wander until she finds Him again. Using all of her weapons of seduction, Kundry urges Parsifal to redeem her: be hers for an hour, and though she is rejected by God and the world, she will be cleansed through him. Parsifal becomes repulsed by her. She rages furiously at this rejections of her, and calls for Klingsor to take this fool as his victim. Klingsor appears, bearing the Sacred Spear once stolen from Amfortas. He hurls is at Parsifal, who catches the Spear in mid-air, and then makes the sign of the Cross. Klingsor immediately vanishes; the castle falls into ruins, and the magic flower-garden becomes a desert. Parsifal scales the shattered walls and looks back at Kundry, declaring that she may yet be redeemed though faith! The, with the Holy Spear in hand, he sets off in search of Amfortas.

Act III – Scene 1: a landscape near Monsalvat The Brotherhood of the Knights of the Grail have fallen into disgrace: Amfortas can no longer reveal the Grail, tormented by the wound that will not heal, and his guilt in losing the Holy Spear to Klingsor; Gurnemanz lives in solitude as a hermit beyond Monsalvat. The Prelude echoes redeeming phrases of the Prophecy and those of the Holy Spear.

Gurnemanz, now very old, hears groans from a thicket near-by his hut. He pushes through the underbrush and discovers Kundry, apparently lifeless. After a great effort, he revives her. Her appearance has transformed dramatically: she no longer has a wild, haunted look, and her face has an ethereal look. She murmurs, “I must serve!’ and then falls silent. There is another surprise: striding across the meadow is a knight, spear in hand, and in full armor. He reproaches the knight to lay down his weapons, for he is in the realm of the Grail. The unknown knight plunges his spear into the ground. Then he raises the visor of his helmet and kneels in prayer. Gurnemanz becomes overcome by emotion as he recognizes the youth he expelled from the sanctuary many years ago. Gurnemanz becomes ardent as he notices that the knight has returned the Sacred Spear. Exhausted from his wanderings, Parsifal relates how he safeguarded the weapon: that even in the midst of danger he never profaned the weapon in battle. After relating his tale, he requests to be brought to Amfortas. Gurnemanz advises him that Titurel has died, and that Amfortas can no longer reveal the Grail. Parsifal torments himself with guilt: that had he returned sooner, he could have helped avert the dramatic decline of the Brotherhood. Overcome with remorse, he sinks to the ground. Kundry tries to revive him with water that Gurnemanz has fetched from the holy spring. While Kundry anoints Parsifal’s feet with oil, Gurnemanz extends his arms in a blessing. The Blessing

Parsifal becomes refreshed by Kundry’s ministrations and then turns to Gurnemanze with the request that today he shall proclaim him King of the Grail. In his first act, he baptizes the weeping Kundry. Then he gazes upon the beauty of the meadow, Gurnemanz explaining that nature has been renewed today because it is the Good Friday Spell.

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Good Friday Spell

Parsifal laments that Good Friday should be a day of grieving and mourning, but Gurnemanz advises him that it is a day of joy: that the Saviour redeemed humanity through His death. The distant tolling of bells announce Titurel’s funeral. .

Gurnemanz and Parsifal solemnly march toward the hall of the Grail, followed by Kundry. The pealing of bells grows louder and the deserted interior of the sanctuary is revealed. Act III – Scene 2: Hall of the Grail The Communion table has vanished form the altar, amd the knights no longer partake in the Eucharest. The wretched Amfortas is borne into the hall to officiate at the rites for his father. The knights demand that he reveal the Grail, but Amfortas has become emotionally destroyed: he kneels beside the body of his father and prays for death. But the knights persist in their demand that Amfortas reveal the Grail. Amfortas refuses; he will never again touch the chalice and endure the pain that it has caused him. Rending his garment,he cries out to the knights to plunge their swords into his open wound and kill him! At that moment, Parsifal enters the Hall and proclaims that only one weapon can end Amfortas’ suffering — the weapon that pierced him. He touches the Holy Spear to Amfortas’ breast and heals the deadly wound. Then he places the Spear upon he altar and removes the Grail from its shrine. As he raises the sacred chalice aloft, Kundry reaches out toward its radiance. Slowly, she sinks earthward, achieving her desire: surcease from life and the promise of redemptions. A white dove descends and hovers over Parsifal. The soft light of the Grail fills the sanctuary; the Prophecy has been fulfilled. The guileless fool has redeemed the Brotherhood of Monsalvat!

Commentary and Analysis

I

n 1848, Wagner had participated in the failed revolution in Dresden. Afterwards, he was forced into political exile, persona non grata in Germany. He lived in Zurich, Switzerland, until 1860, at which time he received amnesty, with the exception of Saxony. Wagner’s early “Romantic operas” — Rienzi (1842); Der Fliegende Hollander (“The Flying Dutchman”) (1842); Tannhäuser (1845); and Lohengrin (1848) were each achieving increasing acclaim. (Wagner would be denied the satisfaction of hearing Lohengrin until he attended a Vienna production in 1861, thirteen after its completion, and eleven years after its Weimar premiere under the direction of Liszt. The “Romantic operas” were composed under contemporary structural conventions and guidelines: they were voice dominated and included many set pieces such as arias, duets and ensembles. Nevertheless, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin contain inklings of Wagner’s future innovations, such as an increasingly ingenious use of leitmotifs and a virtuosity of the orchestral writing. While in exile, Wagner wrote the “Zurich Essays.” Beginning with Art and Revolution and The Artwork of the Future, he addressed a vast range of artistic and political ideas. Opera and Drama (1851) was an immense discourse that fundamentally appraised the function of art and proposed revolutionary ideas that effectively denounced the limitations and restrictions inherent in the methods, patterns and traditions of existing “romantic opera.” He advanced conceptual theories about the “music of the future” — in effect, “program music” that emphasized music’s inherent narrative and descriptive power, and introduced the ideal of “music drama” — words made perceptible by deeds of music, or, words realized through the emotive power of music. Wagner conceived “music drama” as a synthesis of the theatrical arts, a Gesamtkunstwerk that unified poetry, music, acting, scenery and drama. Old practices were theoretically discarded, and he proposed the concept of “endliche melodie” or the continuous flow of melody — in effect, an integrated musico-dramatic work that is through-composed. Ballets were considered irrelevant and were eliminated. Like the chorus of ancient Greek drama, the orchestra functioned as a protagonist of the drama, the music commenting on the action and adding dramatic expressiveness to the work. To realize the ideal of an inseparable text and score, or through-composition, he expanded the use of leading motives, or leitmotifs — the recurring melodic motives serving to unify the “music drama.” Wagner’s ideas about “music drama” represented new and revolutionary conceptions that would elevate opera to the noblest form of theatrical expression. In A Communication to my friends (1851) Wagner dismissed Lohengrin and Tannhäuser as outdated “romantic operas” and announced that he planned to embark on his most ambitious work — The Ring of the Nibelung — his first attempt at practical application of the essential ideas of the “Zurich Essays.”

I

n the “Zurich Essays” Wagner proclaimed his music as the “music of the future.” (The terms “program music” and “music of the future” are synonymous.) “Program music” describes a work with an extra-musical narrative that is usually based in poetry or drama — moods and emotions that are boldly realized as the music relates a story. In modern terms, it could be called “movie music.” During the second half of the nineteenth-century, Western European musicians were deeply embroiled in an aesthetic schism called the “War of the Romantics.” The principal areas of contention were musical structure, the limits of chromatic harmony, and “program music” versus “absolute music.” A paradigm of “program music” was Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, a powerful and original symphonic work that — after Beethoven’s Overtures — had become one of the first great examples

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of “program music.” In the Symphonie Fantastique, Berlioz’s ardent Romanticism gave birth to a brilliant orchestration that he elevated to new dimensions: there was a new thrust of tonal intensity, orchestral color and sonority, and the classical rules of harmony were liberated as previously forbidden chord progressions were integrated into the score. None of the early Romantics — Mendelssohn, Chopin, Schumann or Liszt in his early compositions — was thinking in terms of orchestration on such a grandiose scale. Nevertheless, Berlioz was at the vanguard of the “music of the future,” far ahead of his times, and a profound influence on Wagner and Richard Strauss. The Berlioz orchestral transformations would force all future composers to revise their expectations of orchestral sound capabilities. The “fantasy” or programmatic narrative of the Symphonie Fantastique was Berlioz’s musical revelation of his inextinguishable, consuming passion for the Irish actress Harriet Smithson, an obsession that drove him to the verge of insanity. Miss Smithson did not reciprocate his great love, which, at the beginning would have been impossible since she did not know Berlioz and they had never met. Nevertheless, he virtually scared her to death with intensely impassioned letters that contained fierce and stormy language. When he saw her in the arms of a stage lover, he exploded in jealousy, and unable to bear the pain, rushed from the theater screaming. After hearing rumors that Harriet was involved in a love affair, he portrayed her as a courtesan in the Symphonie Fantastique’s witches’ Sabbath; when he later learned that the rumors were false, he removed the reference to her as a courtesan but still retained her presence at the Sabbath. Confused audiences listened through five movements of the Symphonie Fantastique’s narrative sweeps, and its tumultuous and convulsive drama; few, if any, had any inkling that Berlioz was using his musical language to report the progress of “l’affaire Hector and Harriet.” A musical theme associated with the hero’s love overwhelms the entire symphony, a technique that was to lead to Wagner’s further development of the leitmotif technique. Similarly, the narrative and descriptive essence of Liszt’s “symphonic” poems and the “tone” poems of Richard Strauss introduced a new descriptive and archetypically Romantic genre to classical music. Liszt and Wagner were early proponents of “program music” or the “music of the future”; at the time, they were considered radical progressives. In contrast, conservatives advocated “absolute music” — music without any explicit connection with words or any particular reference to the outside world. “Absolute music” almost exclusively applied to works of the European classical music tradition: they were purely instrumental works without singers and lyrics. As such, opera and lieder remained the genres for music that underscored text and action.

I

n 1845, while still a student, Eduard Hanslick (1825 — 1904), met Wagner in Marienbad. Wagner became impressed by Hanslick’s insightful musical knowledge and enthusiasm and subsequently invited him to Dresden to hear Tannhäuser. However, Hanslick’s musical tastes were conservative. In 1854 Hanslick published his influential book, Vom Musikalisch-Schönen, (“On the Beautiful in Music”), in which he attacked the Wagnerian aesthetic and the “music of the future” associated with both Wagner and Liszt, and ultimately concluded that musical history really began with Mozart, and culminated with Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms. Hanslick further etched himself into Wagner’s list of arch-enemies with a disparaging review of the first Vienna production of Lohengrin (1858). Hanslick had concluded that Wagner’s reliance on musical narration and the expression of feelings or ideas in musical terms were inimical to the nature of music; he further believed that the function of music was to express sonorous forms, not extra-musical associations. In Die Meistersinger, Wagner scorned Hanslick whom he caricatured as Sixtus Beckmesser, the town-clerk and Marker for the Master Song contest. In 1862, Wagner read a prose draft of Die Meistersinger to an invited audience that included Hanslick. The critic quickly recognized that Wagner was immortalizing him as a buffoon; offended and insulted, he charged out of the reading

in disgust, no doubt swearing that revenge against Wagner would now become his all-consuming passion in life. In 1869, Wagner exacted revenge on Hanslick by including him in the re-publication of his bombastic essay, Das Judentum in der Musik (“Jewishness in Music” or “Jewry in Music”), originally published anonymously nineteen-years earlier. Hanslick had become a prominent component of Wagner’s Jewish enemies list, and he brandished his customary anti-Semitic vitriol by attacking Hanslick’s style of criticism as Jewish — therefore anti-German.

A

fter the “Zurich Essays,” Wagner very quickly completed the scores of Das Rheingold (1854) and Die Walküre (1856). But after he set the first two acts of Siegfried, he had fallen into an artistic creative crisis — as well a desperate financial situation. He had promised the music public his “music of the future,” but had produced no new music since Liszt’s 1850 premiere of Lohengrin at Weimar, and a second version of the Faust Overture (1854). The “Zurich essays” — Opera and Drama in particular — represented theories, but as the writing of the four Ring music dramas progressed, practical considerations made it necessary to circumvent some of the composer’s rigid guidelines and precepts that he himself had proscribed: the last act of Siegfried commits the greatest of Wagnerian sins as Brünnhilde and Siegfried sing in unison; Götterdämmerung contains set-pieces, such as an Oath Duet, and huge ensembles. The orchestra — intended to be co-equal with the other arts in Wagner’s conception of the Gesamtkuntswerk — became sovereign over all of the arts. Nevertheless, Wagner achieved his objective in that the Ring’s four music dramas became united by related musical material: some two hundred leitmotifs represent a massive descriptive vocabulary of musico-dramatic symbols and associations. By the time of the final episode, Twilight of the Gods, the listener can virtually follow the dramatic narrative by interpreting the meaning of its musical leitmotif symbols without the benefit of visual or verbal clarification — Wagner’s orchestra ultimately functioned like a massive Greek chorus that narrated and commented on the action. Allegory denotes symbolic representation. The Ring’s leitmotifs are specifically symbolic representations conveyed through the language of music and its inherent emotive power: as such, the drama’s characters, elements, and events become part of a complete mythography whose inner allegorical symbolism — in both words and music — provide intensely profound and varying levels of meaning. The symbolism of myth evokes intuitive rather than rational responses from the human psyche, and Wagner’s musical leitmotifs became those same symbolic images, often revealing and evoking profound inner thoughts and emotions. Ultimately, leitmotifs provided Wagner with the organic structure for his music drama, but more importantly, they provided the wherewithal to add profound impact to the drama through musical symbolism. In the Ring, Wagner proved his genius as both music dramatist and symphonist, composing elements in the music drama that have become indelible for the listener: The Rhinegold’s scene transitions and the “Rainbow Bridge” finale, The Valkyrie’s “Ride of the Valkyries” and “Fire music,” Twilight of the God’s “Rhine Journey” and “Funeral music,” and after Brünnhilde’s “Immolation,” the orchestral depiction of the downfall of the gods and the world’s redemption. Likewise, in the later Die Meistersinger (1868), Wagner compromised the precepts of Opera and Drama but echoed many of the conventions of Parisian grand opera that he had relegated to the Inferno a decade earlier: self-contained songs, ensembles of the main characters, choruses, processions, marches and dances. Die Meistersinger’s predecessor, Tristan and Isolde, was Wagnerian “music drama” without parallel, its resonating harmonic language, suspensions and unresolved dissonances revealing a composer in a state of chromatic fever. However, Die Meistersinger is firmly rooted in the diatonic mode, with its Prelude beginning with a solid affirmation of C major. In effect, for Die Meistersinger, the ideal of the Wagnerian

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music drama so emphatically detailed in Opera and Drama had retrogressed somewhat to the detested Meyerbeerian conventions: in Wagner’s words, “effects without causes.” Wagner explained his betrayal of the Opera and Drama ideal and re-issued Opera and Drama in 1868, soon after the Die Meistersinger premiere.

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n 1852, Wagner was introduced to Mathilde and Otto Wesendonck: destiny had willed that this couple become leading protagonists in Wagner’s life during his exile years in Zurich. Otto had earned a fortune as a partner in a New York silk company. Mathilde — only twenty-three when she met Wagner — was an exquisite and impressionable young woman with a dilettantish talent as a writer of poetry and prose. Mathilde was in awe of Wagner, and she no doubt was the force that urged Otto to offer his patronage to Wagner. Otto’s generous loans and financial support temporarily staved off the frequent financial catastrophes that threatened Wagner and his wife Minna. Otto apparently recognized that Mathilde fit perfectly into the role of Wagner’s muse: she had become a champion of the composer’s achievements and an instrument of inspiration and encouragement. The Asyl was built on the Wesendonck property as a home for Wagner and Minna. Depending on the source, beneath the cordial Mathilde-Richard friendship there was a mysterious passion that seemed to have developed between them, although Wagner apparently took extreme care to avoid any open gesture that might compromise Otto’s good intentions. Nevertheless, Mathilde seemed to have let emotion overpower reason and contrived that Wagner live only fifty yards from her. Afterwards, the Wesendonck’s constructed an ostentatious villa overlooking Lake Zurich which they eventually called the “Green Hill,” and then purchased a modest home on an adjoining property for the Wagner’s, charging them but a token for rent. The infectious and impressionable young Mathilde’s personal yearning and longing to love and be loved became the cause célèbre that inspired Wagner’s creativity: in the end he shared her pain and anguish, and brilliantly described it in his musical language. It is less probable that Wagner’s yearning for Mathilde became the inspiration for Tristan and Isolde: it is more likely that Wagner had been in the throes of composing Tristan and Isolde when Mathilde came into his life, and she served to add confidence to the composer’s conceptions. Ultimately, the Wesendonck’s life seemed to be rotating on a Wagnerian axis. Wagner’s mere presence and constant bloviating overpowered his captured hosts. Otto and Minna observed the masquerade of their respective spouses and slowly became suspect that the relationship of Richard and his muse Mathilde seemed to have transcended mere spiritual communion. In 1857 Richard and Mathilde became artistic collaborators after he set five of her poems to music: the Wesendonck Lieder. Wagner had earlier completed the poem for Tristan and had already begun its musical composition. Mathilde’s poems reveal a heavy influence of the Tristan text: in Der Engel, Wagner is acclaimed an angelic redeemer who came to bear the spirit upward; in Traume, the intensity of love is exposed; and in Schmerzen, the day and night imagery of Tristan is blended with Buddhist concepts of rebirth and regeneration. No doubt that Wagner’s affection for his muse would eventually blossom into an all-consuming love; in their fantasy, both unwittingly cast themselves into the roles of Tristan and Isolde. Mathilde seemingly reciprocated his passion, and at one time apparently echoed the text of Tristan and Isolde to him, declared that she was ready for death since there was nothing more to live for. The Wagner-Wesendonck relationship became an impossible juxtaposition of geometric situations with the sum of its parts fraught with marital tensions. It was indeed a quadrangle, with both Minna Wagner and Otto Wesendonck representing a prominent presence. One incident had overtones of farce: Wagner read his completed Tristan poem to an assembled company of intimates (1857) that included his wife Minna, his lover Mathilde, his future wife (Cosima von Bulow), and their respective husbands, Otto Wesendonck and Hans von Bülow.

The catalyst for the break-up of the Mathilde-Richard idyll became a handsome young Neapolitan who had been coaching Mathilde in Italian. One evening, he had been interpreting Goethe’s Faust, his apparent errors causing Wagner to explode in fury. The next morning he attempted to apologize to Mathilde by sending her a “Morning Confession” which he rolled up in a pencil sketch of the Tristan Prelude. Minna intercepted the message and immediately confronted Mathilde with savage vitriol, severely unnerving Mathilde. Mathilde had been frank with Otto about her relationship with Richard long before the “Morning Confession” crisis, and her husband rather disingenuously appears to have accepted her explanation. But Wagner was less frank with Minna, provoking Mathilde to reproach him for his lack of candor. On the contrary, Wagner denied any wrongdoing, and claimed that his entire relationship with Mathilde was actually one of resignation, of unfulfilled longing. Minna returned to Dresden to cope with her diminishing health. To pacify Minna, Wagner broke off relations with the Wesendoncks and left for Venice. Nevertheless, Wagner’s muse had served to inspire what would become his masterpiece to date — Tristan and Isolde. In Tristan and Isolde, Wagner dramatized the circumstances of his life and his yearning for love: he and Mathilde inhabit the roles of Tristan and Isolde, and it is the strength of their passion that leads them to defy society’s conventions, with death becoming the sole avenue for them to be united and fulfill their passion. Tristan and Isolde is not simply the ultimate glorification of love; it is an idealization of love that transcends experience and resolves in a metaphysical realm. In the autobiographical sense, the opera is an apparent paradox in terms of Wagner’s life experiences: its underlying scenario represents a celebration of unbridled sensuality and self-indulgence that emerged at precisely the time that Wagner was becoming deeply immersed in Schopenhauer’s philosophy of renunciation, self-denial and the extinguishing of desire. The Mathilde-Richard relationship was intimate, but most probably stopped short of sexual consummation. Tristan and Isolde itself is perhaps the best source of evidence. Wagner’s love for Mathilde indeed evoked from him some of the most passionate music ever to be composed, but its monumental expression of yearning surely represents the gushing passion of one who is denied the ultimate ecstasy, rather than one in the throes of that intimacy. Mathilde indeed inspired Tristan and Isolde, and if one assumes that they had indeed consummated their love, that would have shattered the dream and completely changed the concept of Tristan, making it impossible for Wagner to write a music drama that celebrated the ultimate yearning for love rather than its fulfillment.

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ristan and Isolde became an unprecedented milestone in the history of music. It was completed in 1859 but took another six years to be produced on the stage because singers and orchestra players insisted that Wagner’s music was unsingable and unplayable. Wagner himself wondered if the score did not overstep the limits of musical performance: that perhaps it really could not be executed and was unable to be performed. An earlier attempt to mount the opera in Vienna had been abandoned after fifty-seven rehearsals. Ludwig Schnorr, the tenor who created the role of Tristan, was found dead shortly after the premiere; he was 29-years-old and his mysterious early death right after performing Tristan has become the stuff of opera legend. His death has often been attributed to the enormous exertion required of Wagner’s heldentenor role of Tristan, but in reality a chill followed by rheumatic complications had caused an apoplexy event from which the overweight tenor failed to survive. Nevertheless, all of Wagner’s theories of Opera and Drama reached fruition in Tristan and Isolde: it was indeed a revolutionary score containing the “music of the future” — and it was the first work to be effectively defined as a Wagnerian “music drama.” Wagner’s esthetics of music drama, the use of leitmotifs, and the new melodic and orchestral supremacy are as mature as they would later be expressed in the Ring. The work defines the acme of integration, dramatic unity and

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clarity of design: music and drama are one, and the single theme of human passion unfolds with shattering effect in both text and music. Wagner’s harmonic language is saturated with dissonances and suspensions, and there is a continuous texture of dominant 7ths and 9ths, augmented 6ths and appoggiaturas, all of which become intensified by chromatic alteration. The score is a seminal work with respect to the emancipation of the rules of harmony from the Classical diatonic system. A half-century later, the twelve notes of the chromatic scale would be treated as co-equals as atonal music would be developed. Tristan and Isolde, perhaps more than any other piece of music, symbolized the end of one era and marked the birth of another; to some it represented the birth of modern music.

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arsifal was Wagner’s final opera; it premiered in July 1882, some forty years after the work began to germinate in the composer’s mind. As early as the summer of 1845, Wagner developed a familiarity with Li Contes del Graal (c. 1180), a poem by French author Crestien de Troyes that dealt with the adventures of the Arthurian knight Parzival and the quest for the Holy Grail. (The spelling varies from Perceval to Parsifal) The retelling of Crestien’s poem became the main source of Wagner’s opera, which he synthesized with Parzival, an epic masterpiece of German medieval poetry written by Wolfram von Eschenbach during the early years of the thirteenth century. (Wagner no doubt read the modern German versions by Simrock and San-Marte, as well as their Titurel poems.) Both Crestien and Eschenbach conceived of a Grail possessing miraculous powers, although neither identified it with the chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper, or the vessel in which Joseph of Arimathea captured the blood of the wounded Christ during the Crucifixion — the wound that was inflicted by the Sacred Spear of the Roman soldier Longinus. In addition to Christian and pagan sources, Wagner was strongly influenced by Buddhist ideas and oriental thought, much of which introduced to him through the writings of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer: ideas of fellow-suffering, renunciation and the doctrine of transmigration of the soul, the latter manifest by Kundry’s centuries-long journey through the world, under the assumed forms of the biblical Herodias and the Nordic Gundryggia. In Parsifal’s second act the hero becomes enlightened in a similar euphoric moment to that of Buddha: Parsifal repels Klingsor’s seductive flower-maidens, an act in which he becomes enlightened. Wagner fused ideas from several of epic works; but in the end, Parsifal bears Wagner’s individual stamp, its principal ideas entirely those of Wagner himself. Parsifal represents the materialization of Wagner’s entire oeuvre: the final development and consolidation of his creative ideas and ideals. Parallels to Parsifal can be found in all of Wagner’s operas, but Parsifal itself tellingly conveys the quintessence of Wagner’s ideas and concepts.

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arsifal is an enigmatic and elusive work with a host of potential underlying meanings, and throughout its history, critics and public alike have had an enduring fascination with the work. Controversy about Parsifal range variously from a description of the work as sublime, to one of decadence; it has been condemned as an allegory glorifying an impotent masculine world in which militarism and monasticism have become integrated; and it has been accused of representing a sinister anti-Semitic fantasy about the purity of Aryan blood, blood that was contaminated by Jews and ultimately redeemed by the opera’s hero. Hitler glorified Parsifal and appropriated its racist allegories in Mein Kampf, proclaiming that the underlying ideals of National Socialism could only be realized through a comprehensive knowledge of Parsifal, in particular, its invocation of darker elements of racial purity, racial supremacy and regeneration. But even though the Nazi’s adopted Parsifal as a homage to Aryan supremacy, much of its thematic essence represents an antithesis and contradiction of Aryan ideology of the 1930s: a youth destroying his weapons, his renunciation of sexual union with a woman and his embrace of an all-male, religious community.

Many Christian symbols and beliefs abound in Parsifal’s story and music, special qualities that make its presentation a tradition during the holy week of Christianity’s sacred Easter. In the first act, the unveiling of the Holy Grail is solemn and majestic against the ceremonial Eucharist, or Communion; the music associated with the Grail is a direct quotation from the Dresden Amen, a celebrated piece of liturgical music that is associated with Faith throughout the opera. And Amfortas’ loss of the Sacred Spear that wounded Christ on the Cross and its recovery by Parsifal is the main theme of the work. In Religion and Art (1880), published just before the Parsifal premiere, Wagner described the use of Christian imagery in “music drama”: “Art has a duty to rescue religion when it becomes artificial. Art can demonstrate that the symbols which religions would have us believe literally true are actually figurative: Art can idealize those symbols, and thus reveal the profound truths they contain.” Although Parsifal’s story is firmly rooted in Christian ideology, many of its ideas are related to Christian theology but not directly derived from it. The great ethical core of Parsifal is Wagner’s inclusion of elements of the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, concepts that call for the suppression of the Will and extinguishing of desire, and in particular, the notion of compassion, or Mitleid. Schopenhauer concluded that compassion — Mitleid (“Mit” = with, and “Leid” = suffering), represented the most important ethical principle and most basic essential of human morality. Essentially, Mitleid implies the sharing of another’s suffering, and therefore proposes that every truly ethical, unselfish deed evolves from sharing pain and suffering with others, and by inference, one’s determination to alleviate that pain and suffering. The principle of compassion contrasts with malice, an evil state of mind which delights in the suffering of others. Schopenhauer’s concept of suppression — or extinguishing of the Will — became important aspects of the character of Wotan in the Ring, and ultimately led to the godhead’s acceptance of his defeat — the extinguishing of his Will. Likewise in the character of Han Sachs in Die Meistersinger, the Schopenhaurian concept of extinguishing of the Will led to the cobbler-poet’s decision not to pursue Eva. In Parsifal, Wagner interpreted Schopenhauer’s Mitleid as an explicit moral response to the world’s chaos: extinguishing of the Will would transform into ecstasy, and the denial of sexual desire would be transformed into a deep sympathy for those suffering from the torment of yearning and longing. In effect, Wagner’s concept of Schopenhaurian compassion was anti-Tristan, the opposite of obsessive longing and yearning. The great euphoria of Wagner’s scenario becomes Parsifal’s enlightenment by the discovery of compassion. At first, Parsifal is essentially indifferent in his response to Amfortas’ suffering during the Grail ceremony, but as events progress, feelings of compassion begin to germinate within him: ultimately, his compassion for Amfortas’ suffering leads to a miraculous act of redemption, as well as redemption of Kundry through baptism — the opera scenario essentially becomes a cathartic ritual in which each successive event becomes a more intense ennoblement of redemptive compassion.

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agner applied Schopenhauer’s philosophical theories to Parsifal and used them to create characters that clearly represent the philosopher’s opposing ethical and moral principles of compassion and malice. Klingsor represents malice and was refused admission to the Brotherhood of Knights of the Grail because of his impure heart. In his raging passion for revenge, he obtained magical power, and created a luscious garden filled with beautiful enchantresses to lure the Grail Knights from virtue. Opposing the evil Klingsor is the pure figure of Parsifal, his music lofty and noble; he is the ideal manifestation of a man being guided by Mitleid, by compassion. As Parsifal’s mystic

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transformation progresses, he not only wishes to alleviate the anguish and suffering of others, but also identifies with them and shares their pain. As such, his purity of heart enables him to experience the full impact of compassion with every fellow human being. However, he must feel that compassion through instinct, not through a process of reasoning or intellectual discovery. The Prophecy predicts the great qualities of Parsifal, even before he appears: that one will come to heal Amfortas’ wound and restore the waning powers of the Grail: “ein reiner Tor” (defined as “a pure fool” — however, the German “Tor” does not really suggest a foolish person, but rather a simple person, innocent and unspoiled.) Parsifal’s first action is the senseless killing of a swan. He listens with heightened emotion as Gurnemanz reproaches him, and admits his ignorance of the magnitude of his sin: that he was guileless and unaware that he had committed something wrong. As Gurnemanz describes the suffering of the swan, inklings of compassion begin to overcome Parsifal, and in remorse, he breaks his bow and arrow, hurls it to the ground, and vows never to kill wantonly again. In the subsequent temple scene, feelings of compassion begin to take possession of Parsifal’s pure heart as he witnesses Amfortas’ suffering and his tormented cries, and his bodily pain and anguish. Parsifal suddenly clutches his own heart and remains motionless and frozen, petrified as he simultaneously experiences the pain of the wound himself. Parsifal has reached another stage of Mitleid, or compassion: his identification with the suffering of another person. Parsifal’s other experiences intensify his sense of compassion. Like Amfortas before him, Parsifal enters Klingsor’s magic garden and succumbs to Kundry’s embrace, her long kiss intended to seduce him from his exalted mission. But suddenly Parsifal experiences intense feelings of suffering and fear. He presses his hand tightly against his heart as if in the throes of agonizing pain, exactly as he earlier heard Amfortas’ cry of agony in the first act. And then he cries out: “Amfortas!” Parsifal has totally identified with another human’s pain: true Mitleid, true suffering with another. His compassion has proved stronger than his lustful desires, and it is from that compassion that Parsifal will derive his power. In resisting Kundry’s allure and placing himself between the image of the suffering Amfortas and temptation, Parsifal has acquired the strength to defeat the evil powers of Klingsor. In the final act, Parsifal returns to Monsalvat to join in the Good Friday celebration. The earlier Parsifal, exuberant and innocent of spirit, has gained wisdom and maturity through compassion and has become worthy to assume the leadership of the Knights of the Grail. He heals Amfortas with the Sacred Spear and unveils the Grail in its full radiance and splendor. However, the miracle of Amfortas’ healing has not been accomplished by the Sacred Spear alone, but rather, through the power he has acquired through his knowledge and understanding of compassion that conquers evil and the wounds it has inflicted. As Parsifal assumes the duties of spiritual leader of the Knights, he reiterates the source of his strength: the music of the Prophecy acknowledges that the earlier promise of salvation has become a glorious reality. Schopenhauer’s philosophy — as projected by Wagner in Parsifal — echoes the teachings of many of the great religious leaders of mankind: the source of goodness is not knowledge, wisdom, strength, or any qualities of the mind, but suffering and the total indulgence in true compassion. Parsifal’s experiences echo Christianity’s eight Beatitudes (Latin for “Blessings”) contained in the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Mathew: in particular, “Blessed are the pure in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

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arsifal’s underlying themes deal with the “mysteries of faith”: Tristan address the “mysteries of love”; and the Ring resonates with the “mysteries of power.” Wagner preferred to describe Parsifal not as an opera, but a Bühnenweihfestspiel or a play specially composed for the consecration of the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth.

Wagner’s “copyright” of Parsifal was intended to prevent performance outside of Bayreuth: therefore, to deny its performance in lesser theaters and therefore protect its solemn, devotional and religious character from degenerating into mere repertory amusement. He believed that Parsifal required a special, reverential atmosphere, and that the tranquil setting of Bayreuth provided that necessary solemnity. Nevertheless, during Parsifal’s “copyright” period, it was occasionally given elsewhere. Soon after Wagner’s death, there were eight private performances mounted for Ludwig II in Munich in 1884 and 1885; Amsterdam’s Wagner Society produced unauthorized stage performances in 1905, 1906 and 1908. In December 1903, a court ruled that performances in the United States could not be prevented by Bayreuth because there were no reciprocal copyright agreements between the United States and Germany. The Metropolitan Opera — under managing director Heinrich Conried — mounted the opera, despite bitter hostility and chagrin from Cosima Wagner and Bayreuth. And there were stage performances in Great Britain as well as concert performances throughout Europe. The copyright expired in 1914, and Parsifal became the common property of all opera houses. Performances during Holy Week have become customary in large theaters, wholly appropriate to the solemn dignity of its underlying them of the “mystery of faith.” In the past, there were heated arguments involving the sacrilege of presenting the Last Supper and a Mass on stage, but those have long since died down. Wagner’s personal philosophies about life, and the dark side of his personality no longer seem to overpower the performance of his works. In particular, Parsifal is presently recognized as a Wagnerian masterpiece: a diaphanous score of preternatural beauty and refinement, and a sublime and endlessly fascinating work that juxtaposes ambivalent symbolism and underlying ideology with unique expressive power.