Wagner’s Parsifal stands alone in the operatic canon. No
other opera is so fraught with interpretive perils, so encumbered by
tradition, so undermined by preconceptions as this one. Wagner
called this work a Bühenweihfestspiel, a uniquely German
term that can be variously translated as “stage dedication play”
or “festival play for the consecration of a stage.” The
appellation is significant because Parsifal
was the only one of Wagner’s operas to premiere
at his specially designed Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, in 1882. Indeed,
Parsifal was composed with the hall’s sonic peculiarities in
mind. Given that the opera was also, in effect, the great
composer’s final testament (he died six months after its
premiere), Parsifal has always been favored by Wagner cultists as
the apogee of Holy German Art. (This term, which the composer
explicitly celebrated in his penultimate opera, Die
Meistersinger von Nürnberg, was implicitly embodied, at least
in Wagner’s mind, in his own music.)

Then there are the opera’s
pseudo-religious aspects. It is, after all, set among the knights
of the Holy Grail. More importantly, the opera’s central theme
(musically, dramatically, and metaphorically) is one of
redemption. Thus it is perhaps easy to understand why staging
this opera outside Bayreuth—at a remove from the holy of holies,
if you will—was once hotly debated, and why some still argue
whether the conclusion of this music drama ought to
be greeted
with applause or stoic silence.
Wagner
himself worked hard to build the mythology surrounding Parsifal,
hoping