For lovers of Wagner in the DC area, and for those, like me, who just like
to hear his operas, this seems to have been a *Parsifal* year.  It's being
presented by the Washington Opera at the Kennedy Center and, perhaps for
that reason the Wagner Society of Washington has had an almost overwhelming
number of lectures and presentations about Wagner's last opera.

Last night (11/18/2000) I had the pleasure of attending it and the
"Insights" lecture that preceded it.  It was conducted by Heinz Fricke
(about whose entertaining lecture a few days ago at the German Embassy I
wrote in a prior post).  Placido Domingo sang Parsifal; Siegfried Vogel,
Gurnemanz; Catherine Keen, Kundry; Alan Held, Amfortas; Thomas
Steward,Titurel; Sergei Leiferkus, Klingsor; with a further cast of
knights, squires, flower maidens, and voices.

I must confess that, until recently, *Parsifal* was one of my least
favorite Wagner operas.  Perhaps it was its length.  Perhaps I was simply
put off by what I understood to be its religious "message".  Reading,
and listening to, various interpretations of what may have been Wagner's
message, I decided that none of it really made any sense to me, even
accepting the underlying religious premises, and concluded that the opera
should be appreciated, if at all, as a fantasy/fairy tale based upon
Wagner's own confused ideas of religion, sin, and redemption.  I was
pleased to discover last night at the lecture preceding the opera that
this was the view of the lecturer as well.

But coming to terms with the story line (which is for me a close
competitor with *Magic Flute* for preposterousness) doesn't ensure
acceptance of the underlying music.  So during last week, I relistened
to one of my recordings, piecemeal.  It was the DG (413 347-2) Karajan/
Berlin Philharmonic performance with Peter Hofmann as Parsifal; Kurt Moll
as Gurnemanz; Dunja Vejzovic as Kundry; Jose van Dam as Amfortas; Siegmund
Nimsgern as Klingsor; and Victor von Halem as Titurel.  I was blown away.
It was almost as if I was hearing for the first time a musical work that
delighted me and to frequent relistinings of which I could look forward.

Not surprisingly in view of the opera's length, it's essentially at least
a 6-act opera while ostensibly in three acts, each act being divisible into
at least two parts.  Act I starts w/ the orchestral prelude, followed by a
long scene in which Gurnemanz tells the characters and us what has happened
before.  Briefly, Titurel was entrusted with the Holy Grail and the sacred
spear with which Jesus was wounded on the cross and built the Grail castle
at Monsalvat to house the relics, recruiting worthy knights to guard the
grail and perform good deeds in its name.  The villain of the opera,
Klingsor, had sought membership among the Grail brotherhood but was turned
down as not being sufficiently chaste, a condition he sought unsuccessfully
to remedy w/ self-castration, and with skills at sorcery he built a rival
castle stocked with flower maidens and with Kundry (a double agent working
both sides) to lure away Grail knights.  Klingsor has been so good at it,
Titurel's son, Amfortas, seeks to defeat Klingsor but is himself seduced
by Kundry, Unlike the other Grail knights who succumb to such temptation,
Amfortas is not thereby doomed to perpetual ecstasy with the flower maidens
but wounded in the side by Klingsor with the sacred spear which Amfortas
had carelessly put aside while smooching with Kundry.  To add insult to
injury, Klingsor holds on to the spear and Amfortas has to be hustled
back by Gurnemanz to Monsalvat, wounded and spearless, which is highly
inconvenient because only the spear that caused Amfortas' painful wound can
heal it.  As a result, whenever Amfortas appears in the opera he is whining
about his pain and pleading for death.  He's a cry baby.  While Gurnemanz
is explaining all this, young Parsifal, whom all but him and Gurnemanz know
to be the pure and innocent fool who will eventually redeem the spear and
Amfortas (and Kundry too), shows up.  At the moment he's in big trouble
because he'd shot a swan in flight for no reason other than that he likes
to keep in practice shooting birds in flight.  (I'd seen the realistic swan
cadaver during my earlier back stage tour of the opera house which I've
already described elsewhere.) The poor fool doesn't know his name or how he
got there but all-knowing Kundry reveals his mother's name (but not his)
and that she died of grief, whereupon he tries to choke Kundry but is
restrained.  Figuring that such a fool might be the one foretold as the
brotherhood's redeemer and future king, Gurnemanz takes him to the Grail
castle to witness the marvels there.

Here comes the transition music to the second part of the first act during
which the forest scene has dimmed to be unnoticeably concealed by a curtain
while Gurnemanz and Parsifal are still singing and the stage hands are
frantically converting the scene (the theater has no revolving stage) in
time for the music of the Grail hall's interior.  The curtain rises to
reveal the new scene and the Grail knights entering the officers' mess.
Amfortas is brought in and instructed to unveil the Grail (it only sounds
like rap talk in English!), an office that has now fallen on him now that
Titurel, his father feels too old for the task.  Why he remains qualified
for this task despite his disgraceful surrender to Kundry's charms and
forfeiture of the sacred spear and the incurring of his wound remains
unexplained.  Perhaps it has something to do with these offices' being
divinely conferred and not subject to human revocation.  Anyway, during
this time he's whining and moaning about his wound and the pain and the
shame in how he incurred it and how, because displaying the Grail will
cause his wound to open again causing great pain, he'd rather not do so,
even if it means that he, and the other Grail knights who need periodic
recharging from the Grail to maintain their lives and vigor, will die.

But wait!  And here's the rub.  As I was hearing this last night, I was
suddenly hearing a singer whose singing simply stood out from everything
I had heard up to then.  A marvelous voice complementing the orchestra and
contributing to the musical texture and laden with believable emotion!  Cry
baby or not Amfortas was sung by Alan Held in a way to have me write the
subject line of this post as I did.  So, whom else had I heard until then?
Vogel, as Gurnemanz, had the lion's share of the beginning of the act.
It's a hard role to sing without causing drowsiness and he was sometimes
drowned out by the orchestra, as were some of the others.  The others
sing hardly anything that sounds consequential.  Amfortas, brought in
for his morning bath in the stream, didn't sing enough for me to notice
him.  Parsifal, whose lines seemed to be a continuing "I dunno!" seemed so
restrained I'd forgotten that he was being sung by Placido Domingo, and
Kundry mainly mutters and stammers.

The ceremony of communion was wonderfully staged to sublime orchestral and
choral music.  So much so that one didn't have to be an innocent Parsifal
to be at a total loss for words when asked by Gurnemanz what he had seen
and whether he had understood it.  So much harder then, to understand
Gurnemanz's anger and frustration at Parsifal's silence (inasmuch as
Gurnemanz was aware of the prophecy that a perfect fool would be their
savior and had indeed thought of taking him to the Grail castle for that
reason) and why he gives Parsifal the boot, after which an alto voice off
stage reminds us all about the innocent fool.  End of Act One.  An hour and
forty minutes.

The second act is totally different from the first.  It takes place
outside Klingsor's castle in his garden of earthly delights.  There's a
slightly sinister orchestral opening followed by Klingsor gloating over
his contemplated ruin of Parsifal whom he sees approaching the castle in
his magic mirror.  The opera really offers no explanation why Parsifal is
seeking out Klingsor's castle.  Is it the same attraction that brought him
to the Grail castle, which can be found only by those destined to come
there, whether they seek it or not? Apparently not only innocent but also
ignorant of the significance of what he had just witnessed at the Grail
castle, he could hardly have come to Klingsor's castle to recapture the
sacred spear.  But Klingsor finds him a sufficiently valuable prize to
order Kundry to lure him to his destruction, despite her blood-curdling
scream (not recalled from last night's performance) and declared
unwillingness.  Perhaps that's why he's not worried about the fallen
seduced knights who fail to prevent Parsifal's arrival.  After Parsifal
successfully has beaten aside the multitude that would have barred his
path, he comes across a bevy of flower maidens who, after being assured
that he won't hurt them as he did their lovers, fight each other for the
privilege of "playing" with him.

And now we have come to an entrancingly beautiful passage, totally unlike
any music that we would think stereotypically Wagner.  The most similar,
equally haunting, passage I've heard is the "Mallika" episode in Delibes'
*Lakme*, an opera I've never heard all the way through and which to me
seems a strange one to mention in connection w/ Wagner.  (Wayne Connor
 [Conner?], from the faculties of Peabody and Curtis and himself a tenor,
who gave the "Insights" lecture before the opera, likened to music to
something that Rimsky Korsakoff might have written, and that Wagner had
at one time thought of using American popular songs in this episode.)

(Un)fortunately, Parsifal is not permitted to taste the sweets offered
by these nubile ladies because Klingsor has now unleashed Kundry, now an
attractive, spicily maternal, woman of the world, unrecognizable from the
slattern who was required to babble her way through a handful of lines in
the first act.  As can be seen from my subject line, Kundry too has now
come into her own.  This is the only act in which she has a significant
singing role (I think she has only one line in the last act) and I thought
she did it marvelously.  She calls him by his name, probably the first time
he's heard it since infancy, and proceeds to tell him about his deceased
parents and his mother's sorrow.  Has seduction ever taken a more unusual
path? To Parsifal's protestations of grief and remorse, Kundry now replies
that he had best now learn how to love as his parents had at his conception
and kisses him.

As though transformed into his predecessor by this erotic experience,
Parsifal now feels the pain of Amfortas; it's almost as if he'd
become Amfortas and he cries out the famous passage beginning with,
"Amfortas!--Die Wunde!--Die Wunde!--Sie brennt mir hier zur Seite!"
("Amfortas!  The wound!  The wound!  It's burning here in my side!") This
is probably not the development that Kundry was expecting and she tries
to call him out of his vicarious recollection.  Failing to do so, she
discloses that she too is in need of redemption, having been doomed to
wander the world eternally w/out the release of death (why is that always
considered a curse?) because she had laughed at Jesus, and wouldn't
Parsifal join her in an hour of penance.  Parsifal, sensing a trap, rejects
the offer as a ticket to eternal damnation for both, probably figuring that
the hour wouldn't end with pious prayers.  He prefers she show him the way
back to Amfortas, which she angrily refuses, eventually declaring that he
will never find any path that leads him away from her, at which point
Klingsor shows up to bring closure to the matter.  But it's not the closure
Klingsor expected because the spear he throws at Parsifal is caught in
midair by the latter who destroys Klingsor, his gardens and all his
handmaidens other than Kundry by making a sign of the cross with it.
Kundry he tells, "You'll know where to find me." End of Act 2.

The third and last act starts many years later.  The Grail castle has
declined seriously from its one time glory and splendor.  Amfortas, unable
to bear the pain of his never healing wound has sought death by abstaining
from the rejuvenation resulting from the Grail's unveiling, thereby
apparently killing nobody but Titurel, his father.  The knights are however
debilitated and required to depend upon the roots and berries they forage
for their sustenance.  It's Good Friday, which Gurnemanz, who starts this
act as he did the first, later on explains is not a day of sorrow but of
redemption through penitents' tears causing the earth to flourish and
nature to be reborn in spring.  In the meantime, Gurnemanz has found Kundry
whom he wakes from a deep sleep upon which she utters another cry that was
more frightening on my recording than in the theater.  She utters what I
think is her only line in this act ("Dienen...dienen!", "To serve...to
serve") and from here on will confine her performance to pantomime.  Now
Parsifal appears.  Possibly w/ Kundry's arrival at the Grail castle, her
curse no longer prevented Parsifal from finding it again also.  There's
general recognition by all three.  Kundry washes Parsifal's feet, drying
them w/ her hair, and anoints them.  Gurnemanz sprinkles some water on
Parsifal and after he anoints him as the Grail knights' new king, Parsifal,
as his first official action, baptizes Kundry.  Then, after Gurnemanz
assures Parsifal that Good Friday need not be a day of mourning, they
all set out for the Grail castle where Amfortas has agreed to unveil the
sacred chalice one more time out of respect for his dead father, after
which he too hopes to find release in death.  There is another transition
bringing us again to the knights' dining hall as in the first act.
Amfortas, singing wonderfully, makes another embarrassing scene about his
pain, begging the knights to kill him with their swords, when the newly
anointed Parsifal arrives, just in time, with Gurnemanz and Kundry, cures
Amfortas with the point of the spear that had first inflicted the wound and
then, in his new office, himself displays the Grail, glowing with an
incandescent red radiance, to the assembled knights, whereupon Kundry finds
her release in death.  A bit more choral singing and the opera is over.

I'd heard that applause should be withheld at the conclusion of *Parsifal*.
If so, the others in the Kennedy Center audience had not.  The curtain
fell and enthusiastic applause ensued.  All received appropriate respect
in their curtain calls.  Domingo as Parsifal, naturally; Keen as Kundry;
and, I was pleased to notice, Held, as Amfortas, slightly more than
proportionate to his role.  The performance had begun at six and, with two
intermissions, it had lasted until about 10:40 and the house lights were
mercifully turned on to cut short what might well have been even more
extended applause and curtain calls.

Those who have borne with me and read this far might not object to a few
more remarks about the "Insights" lecture.  It was essentially an account
of the opera illustrated w/ musical passages.  But there were also some
interesting items of historical information.  For example, the opening of
Wagner's *Ring* suffered because many of the props hadn't arrived in time.
(For example, one third of the dragon was either all they had or had not
yet arrived.) Apparently, some of the stuff had been shipped to Beirut
instead of Bayreuth!

To ensure an adequate royalty income for his family, Wagner, who had
suffered several heart attacks and suspected that he did not have much
longer to live, insisted that *Parsifal* be performed at Bayreuth only.
When New York's Metropolitan Opera presented it anyway, not a single of
the performers there were ever permitted to sing at Bayreuth thereafter.

Wagner and his wife initially had strong objections to Herman Levi's
conducting the opera because he was Jewish.  Levi was the regular conductor
for King Ludwig's orchestra which was being furnished for the opera's
production.  Ludwig insisted that Wagner accept his entire orchestra,
complete with Jewish conductor, or do without, so Wagner caved in.  He
apparently became reconciled to Levi and his stepping in for Levi when
illness prevented him from completing the conducting of the last
performance of the opera (this being the first and last time that Wagner
conducted at Bayreuth) was considered an act of acknowledgment and
appreciation.

Next Saturday, Verdi's *Il Trovatore*.

Walter Meyer