About the work
Richard Wagner's Bühnenweihfestspiel ("festival play for the consecration of the stage") in three acts was premiered on 26 July 1882 at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus and was intended by Wagner to be performed only there—a restriction circumvented by the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1903 and lifted by copyright expiry in 1914. The work occupies a singular position in Wagner's output, drawing on medieval Christian legend to stage a ritual of sacred renewal rather than conventional dramatic action. It was Wagner's last completed work; he died seven months after the premiere.
Plot
The knights of the Holy Grail, guardians of the sacred vessel that caught Christ's blood, are suffering: their king Amfortas bears an unhealing wound, inflicted by the holy spear that the sorcerer Klingsor stole after Amfortas succumbed to temptation. A prophecy holds that only a pure fool, made wise through compassion, can redeem him. The untutored young Parsifal arrives, ignorant even of his own name, and thoughtlessly kills a swan. In Klingsor's magic garden, the temptress Kundry—a woman cursed to wander for having laughed at Christ's suffering—attempts to seduce Parsifal. At her kiss he suddenly understands Amfortas's anguish; he resists, seizes back the spear, and years later returns to the Grail castle, where he heals Amfortas, baptises Kundry, who dies released, and becomes the new Grail King.
Cultural significance
Parsifal is Wagner's final work and his most meditative, combining Christian imagery, Buddhist and Schopenhauerian philosophy, and his signature chromatic harmony in a score of extraordinary spiritual weight. The Good Friday Music in Act Three is among the most sublime passages in all of Wagner. The work has generated enormous interpretive literature, from Nietzsche's denunciation of its apparent Christian piety to Adorno's philosophical analysis. The Bayreuth tradition of withholding applause after the first act persists to this day. Major modern productions include Stefan Herheim's acclaimed 2008 Bayreuth staging, which folded German history from 1882 to the present into Parsifal's spiritual journey.