A Companion to Wagner's Parsifal
2006; Oxford University Press; Volume: 87; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/ml/gci244
ISSN1477-4631
Autores Tópico(s)Musicology and Musical Analysis
ResumoAlmost the only incontrovertible statement that can be made about Parsifal is that it is problematic. Calling the work his Bühnenweihfestspiel to distinguish it not only from all other operas but from his own music dramas, Wagner set up a special aura round Parsifal that was intensified by his widow Cosima’s almost successful attempt to reserve performances of it to Bayreuth for the thirty years of copyright after the composer died in 1883. This aura inspired a particular kind of enthusiasm and a particular kind of irritation both in audiences and in critics. Enthusiasm and irritation were further fuelled by the Christian imagery of the work, by a few extravagant claims made for its significance by Wagner in old age, and by the piety, confused as to its object, of the Wahnfried circle after Wagner’s death. The Nazification of Winifred Wagner’s Bayreuth in the 1930s with its subsequent effect on all responses to Wagner, and the mixture of embarrassment and cynicism that have marked productions of Parsifal since the waning of Wieland Wagner’s influence, have only increased the noise on this critical battlefield. Yet the work remains the last masterpiece of an extraordinary creative figure at the peak of his powers, its music some of the most complex yet also the most lucid ever written for the opera house. Difficult, intriguing, beautiful, to some ever since Nietzsche deeply rebarbative, Parsifal is an excellent subject for a Companion.
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