# Parsifal as the 5th Opera in the Ring (what think ye?)



## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

> Schofield's thesis is that Parsifal is the continuation and fulfillment of the ideas in the four Ring operas. Wotan is transformed into Amfortas, while the thwarted Alberich becomes Klingsor. Siegfried and Brünnhilde are reborn as Parsifal and Kundry, correspondences that have some basis in Wagner's letters and Cosima Wagner's diaries.


FULL ARTICLE


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## Sloe (May 9, 2014)

I thought Parsifal was the prequel to Lohengrin.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

Sloe said:


> I thought Parsifal was the prequel to Lohengrin.


So then _Lohengrin_ is the 6th opera of the Ring!

And _Tristan und Isolde_ is also an Arthurian romance, and takes place before Percival goes on his grail quest. So maybe _Tristan und Isolde_ is an interstitial story between the Ring and _Parsifal_, meaning it is opera 4.5. [Or maybe we can count it as a full opera, making it the 5th opera of the Ring, with _Parsifal_ and _Lohengrin_ moving to 6 and 7, respectively.

With a little work I bet we can fit in all of them. It's easy to link _Tannhäuser_ and _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg_ to each other, but I bet we can fit them in as Ring operas 8 and 9.

And at that point, _Der fliegende Holländer_ might as well be 10.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

My actual serious answer is that there are certainly similarities between _Parsifal_ and the Ring, but it's more like _Parsifal_ is at most a summation of, but more accurately a variation on some of the ideas of the Ring.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Where are you Woodduck when we need you?


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Barbebleu said:


> Where are you Woodduck when we need you?


He is still busy in the Rachmaninoff vs Shostokovich forum, fending off a looping algorithm. (I am betting that the remaining entertainment value there will wear off very quickly.)


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

mountmccabe said:


> My actual serious answer is that there are certainly similarities between _Parsifal_ and the Ring, but it's more like _Parsifal_ is at most a summation of, but more accurately a variation on some of the ideas of the Ring.


Parsifal does at least follow The Ring in order of composition. The other operas, although there might be some thematic succession, become more problematic as their dates of composition don't quite fit the same way. (My understanding is that Wagner wrote the texts for The Ring in more or less reverse order, but composed, or completed, the music in the order of sequence following the development of the story.)


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Parsifal twists Christian religious themes in a blasphemous way, anointing an "innocent fool" to be the redeemer and savior.

The Ring simply follows pagan myths.

Doesn't matter, though. The Ring and Parsifal both contain some of the greatest, most moving and most astonishing music ever written.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

hpowders said:


> Parsifal twists Christian religious themes in a blasphemous way, anointing an "innocent fool" to be the redeemer and savior.


It's worth noting, though, that in several of his epistles St. Paul advocates being a "fool for Christ"--an idea informing ascetic traditions in both Western and Eastern Christianity for centuries.



hpowders said:


> The Ring simply follows pagan myths.


It's not nearly that simple. Deryck Cooke, in his book _I Saw the World End_, traces in painstaking detail how Wagner adapted and combined, sometimes radically altered, material from five main German and Scandinavian mythological epics, along with several minor sources and a couple of scholarly treatises of his day, in order to fashion his Ring narrative--which Cooke suggests may be "as valid and coherent a dramatic synthesis of the complex mythology of Northern Europe as we are ever likely to get."



hpowders said:


> Doesn't matter, though. The Ring and Parsifal both contain some of the greatest, most moving and most astonishing music ever written.


No argument there.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

amfortas said:


> It's worth noting, though, that in several of his epistles *St. Paul advocates being a "fool for Christ"*--an idea informing ascetic traditions in both Western and Eastern Christianity for centuries.
> 
> It's not nearly that simple. Deryck Cooke, in his book _I Saw the World End_, traces in painstaking detail how Wagner adapted and combined, sometimes radially altered, material from five main German and Scandinavian mythological epics, along with several minor sources and a couple of scholarly treatises of his day, in order to fashion his Ring narrative--which Cooke suggests may be "as valid and coherent a dramatic synthesis of the complex mythology of Northern Europe as we are ever likely to get."
> 
> No argument there.


If you look at the context of Paul's writing it has nothing to do with the kind of fool Wagner was creating.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

I am waiting for someone to write an opera based on Tom Holt's book _Expecting Someone Taller_ which is a very amusing modern day extension of the Ring stories.


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

DavidA said:


> If you look at the context of Paul's writing it has nothing to do with the kind of fool Wagner was creating.


Wagner's opera is based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's _Parzival_, in turn based on Chrétien de Troyes's _Perceval_. Scholars often discuss the central character in these literary works as a type of Holy Fool, an archetypal figure hearkening back to St. Paul's epistles.

No doubt Wagner adapted Parsifal's foolishness for his own purposes. But the germ of the idea can be traced back to the New Testament.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

amfortas said:


> It's worth noting, though, that in several of his epistles St. Paul advocates being a "fool for Christ"--an idea informing ascetic traditions in both Western and Eastern Christianity for centuries.


Yes, and in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov we have the Holy Fool.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

amfortas said:


> Wagner's opera is based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's _Parzival_, in turn based on Chrétien de Troyes's _Perceval_. Scholars often discuss the central character in these literary works as a type of Holy Fool, an archetypal figure hearkening back to St. Paul's epistles.
> 
> No doubt Wagner adapted Parsifal's foolishness for his own purposes. But the germ of the idea can be traced back to the New Testament.


Such talk is actually nonsense when you examine what Paul actually meant. But then scholars have to justify their existance. Sounds as if this guy Schofield is another producer of pseudo-academic tripe.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Florestan said:


> Yes, and in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov we have the Holy Fool.


I believe he is just 'the fool'


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

DavidA said:


> Such talk is actually nonsense when you examine what Paul actually meant. But then scholars have to justify their existance. Sounds as if this guy Schofield is another producer of pseudo-academic tripe.


The various "foolishness for Christ" traditions of Western and Eastern Christianity, which drew on Paul's writings, may themselves be nonsense in terms of what he actually meant. For that matter, some have argued the same about Christianity as a whole in terms of what Jesus actually meant.

I'm not arguing the fidelity of the message, just the continuity of the theme.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

DavidA said:


> I believe he is just 'the fool'


I don't think so. The Russian word is "Yuródivïy," which is often translated as "Simpleton" or "Idiot." But I have read that a more accurate translation to English is "Holy Fool." There is much written about this "Holy Fool" in Boris Godunov. I'd have to look it up again, but I am pretty sure the Simpleton was considered a holy man. That is why he could call out Boris and not be dragged off to torture.


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## Scott in PA (Aug 13, 2016)

I’m fascinated by some of the thematic relationship. In the Waltraute scene, at the point Brünnhilde sings “…ich Thörin enttaucht, nicht fass’ ich was ich erfahren” (… disappointing fool that I am, I don’t grasp what you’re driving at). There’s a musical genesis of the fool motive from Parsifal here, i.e. the music is strikingly similar, not just that they both contain the word for fool (Tor).


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The difference in mythic milieu aside, _Parsifal_ is in certain basic respects a retelling of the _Ring._

The central symbols of both - in the _Ring,_ the Gold of the Rhine and the World-Ash Tree (with the Sacred Spring flowing from its roots), and in _Parsifal_ the Holy Grail and Spear (its tip aglow with the redeeming blood of Christ) - are elemental repositories of life energy which are coveted, manipulated, and abused by those who seek power, whether for good or for ill. In psycho/religious terms, the pairs of symbols - Rhinegold/World-Ash and Grail/Spear - represent the feminine/masculine energies of the psyche in sacred union, the unified, pure, unconflicted soul as yet uncorrupted by sin ("sin" being the ego's embrace of an illusion of separateness and self-sufficiency, a notion fundamental to many religions, most germanely Christianity and Buddhism).

Just as, in the Ring, Wotan commits the original sin of ripping his spear of dominion from the World-Ash, and Alberich the parallel sin of ripping the Gold from the rock and fashioning it into an instrument of personal power, so in _Parsifal_ Titurel forces the Grail's free, nurturing grace into the controlled ritual of a nature-corrupting, sexuality-denying cult, Titurel's agent Amfortas arrogantly tears the Sacred Spear away from its companion, the Grail, thus delivering its power into evil hands, and Klingsor, in dark parallel to Titurel's suppression of sensual life, castrates himself in order to obtain Spear and Grail for his own destructive ends. Alberich is Wotan's dark alter ego, as Klingsor is Titurel's, and in _Parsifal _it's significant that after Parsifal destroys Klingsor he returns to Montsalvat to find that Titurel too, along with his grip on the Grail, is dead. His death is a "Gotterdammerung" - but this opera, unlike the _Ring_, does not end here, but goes on to fulfill what the _Ring'_s final measures could only promise.

The parallels continue with Parsifal himself, who, I like to say, is a Siegfried who grows up. Siegfried, meeting a woman and crying out for his mother who died giving him birth, remains to seek fulfillment in Brunnhilde's arms, which too easily become Gutrune's (remember that Brunnhilde told Siegfried that she loved him even before he was born - a mother's role). Parsifal, crying out for his mother who died from grief at losing him, recognizes through his identification with Amfortas that to yield to Kundry's embrace is to lose his manhood before he ever finds it - to remain, like Siegfried, immature forever - and ultimately that the healing of the soul, the union of male and female, must take place at a higher level: the reunion of Grail and Spear. The enactment of this reunion is the only thing that can heal the wound of Amfortas, the unbearable, guilty pain of which is the isolated ego _in extremis_. It is to this that _Parsifal_ understands he must devote himself - this which, whether or not Wagner knew it at the time, that last exalted motif of the _Ring _foretold.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Scott in PA said:


> I'm fascinated by some of the thematic relationship. In the Waltraute scene, at the point Brünnhilde sings "…ich Thörin enttaucht, nicht fass' ich was ich erfahren" (… disappointing fool that I am, I don't grasp what you're driving at). There's a musical genesis of the fool motive from Parsifal here, i.e. the music is strikingly similar, not just that they both contain the word for fool (Tor).


There's more than one musical motif in Wagner's operas that carries over from work to work and bears similar dramatic connotations. The most notable one may be the "Day" motif which opens act 2 of Tristan -the drop of a perfect fifth followed by two climbing scale steps - which appears in Lohengrin's prohibition and in the dark music of Ortrud, is used in sweeter form to characterize Gutrune, and figures most poignantly in the long opening melody of Parsifal where the slowly climbing melody breaks into an expression of suffering. Wagner seems to have associated this figure with dramatic elements signaling forces of opposition, frustration or pain.


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## Faustian (Feb 8, 2015)

Calling Parsifal a sequel or an extension of the Ring is a bit of an oversimplification of the matter. Keep in mind that Wagner wrote the first scenario for Parsifal in 1845, years before he had started work on the Ring. The truth is there are certain central themes that preoccupied him and reoccurred in various forms throughout all of his works: redemption, the nature of love, and heroes that arrive from an inexplicable elsewhere and who at first at odds with the existing social order, but whose antagonism is eventually overcome often by some wise father-figure who are able to understand and forgive. As Schofield goes on say in the article posted, there were also rather large parallels in Wagner's own mind between Tristan and Parsifal; writing to Mathilde Wesendonck Wagner said "Suddenly it has become hideously clear to me: Amfortas is my Tristan of Act III in a state of inconceivable intensification...", and he actually toyed with the idea of bringing Parsifal into the third act of Tristan where lost in his wanderings he brings a temporary solace.

If we step back I think a broader question Wagner was trying to address as an artist was the meaning of life in a post-religious world. Wagner took a profoundly religious view of the human condition. His aim in all the mature works was to give credibility to the thought that we are rescued by our ideals, despite their purely human origin, and also because of it.

This article on the site ThinkClassical, Parsifal: A Theology After the Death of God, gives an overview of many of the ideas and influences that were behind these artworks, and brings to light some of the important connections between Parsifal and The Ring.

For those not incline to read the entire essay, here are a few selections:



> The question becomes what has become of God in Wagner's Parsifal, and why he is never once evoked as the source of salvation. Even the final salvation in Parsifal is neither granted deus ex machina by a supernatural intervention of the grace of God, nor the miracle of the Resurrection, but comes of a humanistic enlightenment through an awakening of universal compassion for suffering of a kind more akin to the Buddhist concept of karuṇā. The final salvation in Parsifal can be read as the futility of appeals to the supernatural intervention of a God-King





> In short, come Parsifal, the anthropomorphic personal God-King of traditional theology is already dead....The question becomes, how, in Wagner's previous oeuvre leading up to Parsifal, this came about.
> 
> What has happened in Wagner is that the anthropomorphic God has been consumed in the flames of the "mighty fortress" of Valhalla at the climax of Götterdämmerung. For "a mighty fortress is our God"-"ein feste Burg ist unser Gott". Nor is this interpretation of Wagner at all original in that George Bernard Shaw already says this in his book The Perfect Wagnerite when he calls Wotan the Godhead. This might be considered alarming to religious conservatives, but there is good evidence for the remarkable insightfulness of Shaw's interpretation.





> Götterdämmerung is a celebration of the apocalyptic downfall of the dominion over the world of the God of war over humanity in a way that expresses a yearning for peace, and freedom from the endless sanctification of war by organised religions that demand endless blood sacrifice to the Abrahamic Wotan-something that remains as relevant today as it was in Wagner's own day





> In Parsifal...Salvation comes from a humanistic source, through compassion. And for Wagner, Jesus is human, and the salvation of Christ, a humanistic salvation through the universal awakening of compassion for the suffering of our fellow humanity. Jesus and the anguish He experiences during his crucifixion become humanistic symbols of universal suffering and awakening to the need for compassion. Indeed, even the Koran acknowledges Jesus as the Prophet of Love.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Faustian said:


> Calling Parsifal a sequel or an extension of the Ring is a bit of an oversimplification of the matter. Keep in mind that Wagner wrote the first scenario for Parsifal in 1845, years before he had started work on the Ring. The truth is there are certain central themes that preoccupied him and reoccurred in various forms throughout all of his works: redemption, the nature of love, and heroes that arrive from an inexplicable elsewhere and who at first at odds with the existing social order, but whose antagonism is eventually overcome often by some wise father-figure who are able to understand and forgive. As Schofield goes on say in the article posted, there were also rather large parallels in Wagner's own mind between Tristan and Parsifal; writing to Mathilde Wesendonck Wagner said "Suddenly it has become hideously clear to me: Amfortas is my Tristan of Act III in a state of inconceivable intensification...", and he actually toyed with the idea of bringing Parsifal into the third act of Tristan where lost in his wanderings he brings a temporary solace.
> 
> If we step back I think a broader question Wagner was trying to address as an artist was the meaning of life in a post-religious world. Wagner took a profoundly religious view of the human condition. His aim in all the mature works was to give credibility to the thought that we are rescued by our ideals, despite their purely human origin, and also because of it.
> 
> ...


Excellent observations. _Parsifal_ was certainly not a sequel to the _Ring_, but it did for the first (and, obviously, last) time in Wagner's works offer a reasonably satisfying resolution to the problems that occupied him - specifically, it gives an answer to what, at the end of the _Ring,_ remained a question. Which is not to say that _Parsifal_ doesn't raise questions of its own!

Wagner's rejection of the authoritarian Jehovah who demands sacrifices and commands genocide and war is perhaps even more directly represented in the "Christian" Titurel than in the pagan Wotan. Those who object to Wagner's presentation of Christianity in _Parsifal_ are not entirely off base, but the opera does not so much distort Christianity as condemn it. It is a work as disturbing as it is sublime, and it really is an incredibly potent act of subversion by the "sorcerer of Bayreuth."


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

There's the exquisite Parsifal music and then there is all other Wagnerian music.


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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

nina foresti said:


> There's the exquisite Parsifal music and then there is all other Wagnerian music.


There is Wagnerian music and then there is all other music.


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## gardibolt (May 22, 2015)

Florestan said:


> I don't think so. The Russian word is "Yuródivïy," which is often translated as "Simpleton" or "Idiot." But I have read that a more accurate translation to English is "Holy Fool." There is much written about this "Holy Fool" in Boris Godunov. I'd have to look it up again, but I am pretty sure the Simpleton was considered a holy man. That is why he could call out Boris and not be dragged off to torture.


Which ties in to Dostoevsky's The Idiot, in which the epileptic Prince Myshkin is essentially a holy fool. That book predates Parsifal, though I don't know whether Wagner was familiar with it.


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## mountmccabe (May 1, 2013)

gardibolt said:


> Which ties in to Dostoevsky's The Idiot, in which the epileptic Prince Myshkin is essentially a holy fool. That book predates Parsifal, though I don't know whether Wagner was familiar with it.


This means that Weinberg's opera _The Idiot_ is ALSO a Ring opera!


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## amfortas (Jun 15, 2011)

nina foresti said:


> There's the exquisite Parsifal music and then there is all other Wagnerian music.





SiegendesLicht said:


> There is Wagnerian music and then there is all other music.


There is all other music and then there is . . . uh . . .


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

So, I happen to be listening to Parsifal today (Karajan, 4CD), and it strikes me, on first impression, as being more like Rhinegold than Gotterdamerung.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

JAS said:


> So, I happen to be listening to Parsifal today (Karajan, 4CD), and it strikes me, on first impression, as being more like Rhinegold than Gotterdamerung.


In what way? ..........


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

amfortas said:


> There is all other music and then there is . . . uh . . .


...no other music.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> In what way? ..........


To my admittedly uninformed ears, it feels more organic and self-contained than Gotterdamerung, which reaches back to the earlier operas to bring back a wealth of themes, musically and dramatically. And maybe that is also what I am feeling, the relative calmness of Rhinegold rather than the dramatic resolution of Gotterdamerung. But I am probably just blathering.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

Okay, blathering it is . . .


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Well, there must be something that makes a connection for you. 

I get a strange connection every time I hear the opening note for Act II Vorspiel of Gotterdammerung I think of the opening note of Act II in Fidelio.


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## JAS (Mar 6, 2013)

In listening this morning to Tannhauser (Solti-Decca), I am also a bit surprised (though perhaps I should not be) to hear a number of moments that remind me of moments in The Ring. (I suppose it should not be unreasonable for anyone composing so much music to occasionally draw a little deeper from an old well.)


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

JAS said:


> In listening this morning to Tannhauser (Solti-Decca), I am also a bit surprised (though perhaps I should not be) to hear a number of moments that remind me of moments in The Ring. (I suppose it should not be unreasonable for anyone composing so much music to occasionally draw a little deeper from an old well.)


Composers are bound to sound like themselves. In operas by most composers you could transfer whole arias from one opera to another and no one unfamiliar with the works would be the wiser. What strikes me about Wagner is not the resemblances between works but the way he creates a distinctive sound world for each one, even for the separate operas of the _Ring. _


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