'Parsifal' in Bayreuth

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1882, eminent German conductor Hermann Levi led the first performance of Richard Wagner’s new opera, Parsifal — a work that would also turn out to be his last, as Wagner would die the following year in Venice.

No other Wagner opera would arouse the same level of controversy as Parsifal. Some thought it a blasphemous parody of the Catholic Mass, others, like the anti-religious Friedrich Nietzsche, saw it as a sanctimonious sell-out. Wagner helped fuel the controversy by calling the work a “sacred stage festival play.” Despite the notorious anti-Semitism of Wagner and his circle, the bulk of those Bayreuth performances, like the very first, would be conducted by Hermann Levi, who was Jewish.

Levi wrote to his father about an unusual occurrence that took place during the final performance of the first run of Parsifal at Bayreuth:

“Just before the final scene, Wagner appeared in the pit, twisted and turned his way up to my desk, took the baton from my hand and conducted the performance to the end. I remained at his side, because I was afraid he might slip up, by my fears were quite groundless — his conducting was so assured that he might have been nothing but a Kapellmeister all his life. At the end, the audience burst into applause which defies all description.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Richard Wagner (1813-1883): Transformation Music, from Parsifal; London Symphony; Sir Adrian Boult, conductor; EMI Classics 62539

On This Day

Births

• 1782 - Irish composer and pianist John Field, in Dublin

• 1791 - Austrian composer and pianist Franz Xaver Mozart in Vienna. He was the sixth child and youngest surviving son of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (who died in December of 1791 when Franz Xaver was less than a year old). Franz Xaver studied with Hummel and Salieri, among others.

• 1856 - British dramatist and music critic George Bernard Shaw, in Dublin

• 1866 - Italian composer opera Francesco Cilea, in Palmi, Calabria

• 1874 - Russian-born American double-bass player, conductor and new music patron, Serge Koussevitzky, in Vishny-Volochok (Julian date: July 14). He was engaged as the permanent conductor of the Boston Symphony, a post he held for 25 years.

• 1876 - American composer, conductor and pianist Ernest Schelling, in Belvidere, New Jersey

• 1949 - South African-born Irish composer Kevin Volans, in Pietermaritsburg

Premieres

• 1882 - Wagner: opera Parsifal, in Bayreuth at the Festpielhaus, Herrmann Levi conducting

• 1940 - Henry Cowell: Pastoral and Fiddler’s Delight, by the All-American Youth Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski conducting

• 1985 - Elliott Carter: Penthode at London’s Royal Albert Hall, with the Ensemble InterContemporain and the Paris Orchestral Ensemble conducted by Pierre Boulez