Parsifal, and Wotan's Wolfgang's Farewell

Parsifal is never going to be anyone’s favourite Wagner opera: too esoteric, and of course as with every Wagner opera you have the ongoing debate about whether or not the composer’s views are expressed in the work (and I’m not talking about the older Wagner’s enthusiasm for Buddhism, of which there is quite a lot of Parsifal). At the same time, Parsifal will never go entirely out of fashion, either. It wasn’t just Wagner’s last opera but the only one he wrote already knowing what an opera in the Festspielhaus would sound like, having produced the Ring there already, it contains some incredibly beautiful music, and there is nothing quite like listening to it in Bayreuth. It was the first opera I ever heard there, having gotten a ticket via a friend, more than a decade ago, it was this year’s new production, and it was the opera with which the 57 years of Wolfgang Wagner’s rule as head of the Bayreuth Festival ended, last night. Yours truly and the aged parents were in attendance, and it was captivating, at times highly irritating, and oddly touching.

( Other than that, Selena, how was the opera? )