Parsifal - Reactions To Parsifal

Reactions To Parsifal

Since Parsifal could initially only be seen at the Bayreuth Festival, the first presentation in 1882 was attended by many notable figures. Reaction was varied. Some thought that Parsifal marked a weakening of Wagner's abilities. The critic Eduard Hanslick gave his opinion that "The Third act may be counted the most unified and the most atmospheric. It is not the richest musically," going on to note: " And Wagner's creative powers? For a man of his age and his method they are astounding ... It would be foolishness to declare that Wagner's fantasy, and specifically his musical invention, has retained the freshness and facility of yore. One cannot help but discern sterility and prosaism, together with increasing longwindedness."

The conductor Felix Weingartner found that "The flower-maidens' costumes showed extraordinary lack of taste, but the singing was incomparable.... When the curtain had been rung down on the final scene and we were walking down the hill, I seemed to hear the words of Goethe "and you can say you were present." The Parsifal performances of 1882 were artistic events of supreme interest and it is my pride and joy that I participated in them."

Hugo Wolf was a student at the time of the 1882 Festival yet still managed to find money for a ticket to see Parsifal twice. He emerged overwhelmed: "Colossal - Wagner's most inspired, sublimest creation." He reiterated this view in a postcard from Bayreuth in 1883: "Parsifal is without doubt by far the most beautiful and sublime work in the whole field of Art." Gustav Mahler was also present in 1883 and he wrote to a friend; "I can hardly describe my present state to you. When I came out of the Festspielhaus, completely spellbound, I understood that the greatest and most painful revelation had just been made to me, and that I would carry it unspoiled for the rest of my life." Max Reger simply noted that "When I first heard Parsifal at Bayreuth I was fifteen. I cried for two weeks and then became a musician." Alban Berg described Parsifal in 1909 as "magnificent, overwhelming," and Jean Sibelius, visiting the Festival in 1894 said "Nothing in the world has made so overwhelming an impression on me. All my innermost heart-strings throbbed... I cannot begin to tell you how Parsifal has transported me. Everything I do seems so cold and feeble by its side.That is really something." Claude Debussy thought the characters and plot ludicrous, but nevertheless in 1903 wrote that musically it was "Incomparable and bewildering, splendid and strong. Parsifal is one of the loveliest monuments of sound ever raised to the serene glory of music". Nevertheless, he was later to write to Ernest Chausson that he had deleted a scene he had just written for his own opera Pelléas et Melisande because he had discovered in the music for it 'the ghost of old Klingsor, alias R. Wagner'.

Some took a more acerbic view of the experience. Mark Twain visited the Festival in 1891: "I was not able to detect in the vocal parts of Parsifal anything that might with confidence be called rhythm or tune or melody... Singing! It does seem the wrong name to apply to it... In Parsifal there is a hermit named Gurnemanz who stands on the stage in one spot and practices by the hour, while first one and then another of the cast endures what he can of it and then retires to die."

Performance standards may have contributed to such reactions; George Bernard Shaw commented in 1894 that "The opening performance of Parsifal this season was, from the purely musical point of view, as far as the principal singers were concerned, simply an abomination. The bass howled, the tenor bawled, the baritone sang flat and the soprano, when she condescended to sing at all and did not merely shout her words, screamed..."

In later years Parsifal attracted different admirers. Joseph Goebbels, the Reichsminister for Propaganda, was a strong advocate of the work. After hearing it for the first time in 1928, he described it as "my greatest experience at the opera by the end, I was completely overwhelmed."