Wagner's Parsifal is unlike any other stage work. For a start, no opera has had a more intimate performance bond with a particular theatre than Wagner's final work has with his own Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Parsifal was written with the unique acoustics and technology of the Festspielhaus in mind, was premiered there in 1882, was copyrighted to Bayreuth for the first 30 years of its existence, and retains its specially potent association with the festival.
Wagner also endowed Parsifal at Bayreuth with a unique pretention, designating it a "sacred stage festival drama." He made it clear that he saw the 1882 premiere of what he probably knew would be his last work as a consecration of his own theatre—even though the Ring had been premiered there six years earlier. Nearly 70 years on, in 1951, a revolutionary new production by the composer's grandson Wieland was consciously proffered as a post-Nazi reconsecration of Bayreuth. Now, in 2008, a third pivotal Bayreuth Parsifal—this time by the Norwegian director Stefan Herheim—has attempted to do the same thing all over again, but in a very different cause.
Running through Herheim's show is the insistence that Wagner's political and cultural legacies are inseparable, and that the old evasions cannot stand. At the end of the second act, to an audible intake of breath throughout the Festspielhaus, Nazi banners and swastikas are briefly unfurled around the set's recreation of Wagner's own house, Wahnfried. This is, apparently, the first time since Hitler's own day that such insignia have been displayed in any context in the Festspielhaus. Parsifal rapidly destroys them with a wave of his magic spear and marches determinedly into Wagner's house to cleanse it—a thrilling moment on many levels. Would this taboo-breaking scene trigger a bout of the famously brutal Bayreuth booing? Quite the opposite. The audience explodes into a catharsis of cheering.
Parsifal tells the story of a decaying order of Grail knights saved from extinction by an innocent stranger's ability to redeem them from suffering and renew their mission. The story is set to a remarkably radical score, more sensuous and flowing than anything else Wagner wrote. Full of tonal flux and a profound refinement, Parsifal has a claim to be the single most influential piece of music ever written, its legacy directly traceable in major works by composers as diverse as Strauss, Debussy, Elgar and Scriabin.
Moreover, the annual ritual took its place at the heart not just of a cult of Wagner, but, increasingly, also of German nationalism and antisemitic theorising. Though there is nothing explicitly antisemitic in Parsifal—and for what it's worth, Wagner entrusted the premiere to the Jewish conductor Hermann Levi—its story of a corrupted society made pure was developed by the early 20th-century Bayreuth circle into a potent parable of Germanic racial and spiritual exclusivity. Bayreuth was one of the seedbeds in which Nazi ideas first flourished. Hitler himself did not like Parsifal, but a Bayreuth exhibition on the history of the Grail legend this summer reminds us that the work's aesthetic influence can clearly be seen in Heinrich Himmler's plans for an SS shrine at Wewelsburg.
When Bayreuth was allowed to reopen in 1951, it was accompanied by a public declaration from Wagner's grandsons that, in the interest of a trouble-free festival, visitors should "kindly desist from discussion or debate of a political nature." Here, the Wagner brothers insisted, "art is what matters." Herheim's Parsifal, which closes in late August, takes direct issue with that legacy. It is an amazing show, because it confronts not just Parsifal the work, not just Wagner the cultural phenomenon and not just modern German history, but also the way all of these are woven together in Bayreuth itself. It is also the most entertaining Parsifal I have ever seen. Herheim's production poses the question of whether Wagner's own legacy, like the world of the Grail knights, can ever be redeemed. In many ways, the show also embodies its own answer—and signals a moment of renewal for Wagner's masterpiece.
Bayreuth after Wolfgang
Not everything at Bayreuth is likely to change if, as expected, Wagner's surviving grandson Wolfgang finally steps down this summer as director of the festival after 57 years. Wolfgang has always opposed suggestions that the repertoire should be expanded to include Wagner's three earliest works—Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi—none of which has ever been performed on the hallowed Festspielhaus stage. Don't expect this to change any time soon. Yet two of these rareties can be seen in northern Europe in the next six months—Wolfgang's daughter Katharina is directing Rienzi in Bremen in the autumn, and Die Feen is scheduled for Paris's Châtelet theatre next spring—while the third, Das Liebesverbot, was put on by New York's Glimmerglass festival this summer. As Parsifal himself says, you know where you can find me.
