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  • A Companion to Wagner's Parsifal
  • Anthony J. Steinhoff
A Companion to Wagner's Parsifal. Edited by William Kinderman and Katherine R. Syer. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2005. ix + 364 pages + 13 illustrations. $90.00.

Understanding Richard Wagner's mature stage works is far from an easy task. Textually and musically, the Ring, Tristan, Meistersinger, and Parsifal are complex artistic [End Page 561] creations, open to multiple layers of analysis and interpretation. Each of these music dramas also brings up weighty philosophical, intellectual, and political questions, with the result that there is not only considerable debate over the meaning of any given opera, but also an enormous amount of literature on the Wagnerian opus—in whole and in part. Indeed, so labyrinthine are the issues surrounding text (score), context, and scholarship for Wagner's works that even specialists can find themselves overwhelmed. In an effort to offer guidance to the riddle that is Wagner's swan song, Parsifal, Camden House has recently issued a volume in its series of companions to major artistic works, periods, and literary figures.

At first glance, this Companion appears to deliver the goods. There are three essays that assess central qualities of the opera's—or Bühnenweihfestspiel (festival stage dedication piece) as Wagner called it—libretto. Mary Cicora examines Wagner's reworking of the medieval Parzival legend; James M. McGlathery probes the theme of erotic love in the libretto and its medieval sources; and Ulrike Kienzle investigates the drama's religious and philosophical dimensions. Next come a trio of pieces on the opera as music: Kinderman's account of Wagner's creative process for Parsifal, Syer's analysis of the Act I Grail scene, and Warren Darcy's fascinating study of "musical magic" in the opening sections of Act II. The volume concludes with two contributions dealing with the work's reception: Roger Allen's remarks on Houston Stewart Chamberlain as Wagnerian nationalist, and Syer's survey of Parsifal stage history.

Substantively, however, the book is less than satisfying, especially as a reference work that should be accessible to specialists as well as those with more general interests in Parsifal. Of the eight essays, only two—Cicora's piece and Syer's on staging—provide the type of "background" information that a reader expects from such a volume. Yet, neither one is particularly imaginative or insightful. Cicora's essay is little more than a synthesis of recent work on Wagner's medieval appropriations. It is solid, highlighting Wagner's mystical, Schopenhauerian take on the medieval material, but pedestrian. Syer's article is more valuable, since very little work has been done concerning Parsifal on stage, particularly for the post-1945 period. The comments on Parsifal in the GDR are especially welcome. All in all, however, it is primarily a descriptive piece with only occasional references to non-Bayreuth productions.

The remaining essays are more scholarly in their content, but ultimately of limited relevance to the task at hand. Symptomatic of this situation is Kinderman's own introduction. Instead of discussing the volume's aims and approach, as one would expect, he launches into a discussion of the challenges Wagner faced in constructing his libretto (raising themes that Cicora also develops) and his borrowing of the "Dresden amen" figure from Liszt. Similarly problematic is the piece on erotic love. While this is a theme worthy of extended treatment, McGlathery devotes most of his attention to aspects of the medieval texts (e.g. the character of Gawain/Gawan) that play little part in Wagner's account. Not only is Wagner's libretto given short shrift (a mere four pages), but McGlathery never once interrogates it from the perspective of nineteenth-century discourses on love and sexuality.

Kienzle also takes up a central issue in her remarks: the long-debated question of whether Parsifal is a "Christian" opera. In her sprawling and overly lengthy piece, she does well to point out the variety of influences—Christian, Buddhist, and philosophic (Schopenhauer)—bearing on the work's unique Weltanschauung. But, precisely for this reason, her conclusion that we might still view this work's mysticism as [End Page 562] consonant with Christian tradition makes little sense. Nor...

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