Veiled Maidens in Bayreuth

The Festspielhaus in Bayreuth was surrounded by fences, checkpoints and security guards last month due to an Islamic interpretation of Wagner’s final and deeply controversial stage work, Parsifal. But how new is this interpretation really and how can Wagner still be relevant today?

Since World War 2, the German composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) has stood in a rather unfortunate light. Adolf Hitler raised the composer to be his greatest inspiration, seeing himself as the ideal image of the Wagnerian hero who would save the German nation.

Wagner had been dead for many years when Nazism rose in the 1920s. However, he was still known to have had strong antisemitic attitudes which especially came forth in his dark essay Judaism in Music from 1850.

It has also been important and popular for scholars to examine whether Wagner’s antisemitism can be heard in his works, despite the absence of explicit mentioning of Jews in his operas. For is it still legitimate to stage Wagner’s works today? And how do opera directors handle these work

Let us take a look at Wagner’s final and for many deeply confusing opera Parsifal from 1882. As many of his other works, critics and audiences alike have had difficulties understanding Parsifal and many have simply avoided the work. It seems heavy, abstract, strangely religious and then at the same time not, and it is also very long – approx. 5,5 hours including intervals.

Many describe the music of Parsifal as spellbinding but the drama as incomprehensible, rotating around a wounded Grail king (Amfortas) in an existential crisis, an Arabic wizard (Klingsor) with violent drives, a young an innocent hero (Parsifal) and one woman (Kundry) who is a wild Grail messenger, seductive sex slave and a mute (and in the end, dead) Mary Magdalene-figure all in one.

Parsifal has been viewed as both deeply antisemitic, racist and misogynist. And many opera directors have even modified central elements in the work to let it stand in a more positive light. One example is the British director Keith Warner who made Kundry survive in his critically-acclaimed version of the work at The Royal Danish Opera in 2012.

The question is, though, whether Wagner with Parsifal not only dramatizes but actually endorses these elements of discrimination. Could Parsifal even be read as critique of the same exclusionary processes – e.g. antisemitism, racism and misogyny – for which the work has been so heavily criticised?

Wagner called his Parsifal a “Bühnenweihfestspiel” (stage consecration festival play) to be performed only in his festival house in Bayreuth, Wagner’s theatre ‘temple’ dedicated to the ‘religion of art’ – i.e. his own stage pieces which are still performed there to this day. This fact, together with the work’s numerous Christian references, have led many to view Parsifal as a Christian work. The most famous of these was the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) who wrote, in his scornful essay to the composer following the birth of Parsifal, that “Richard Wagner, seemingly the all-conquering, actually a decaying, despairing decadent, suddenly sank down helpless and shattered before the Christian cross!”

Even though the name of Christ is never actually mentioned, many point to that Parsifal promotes a victory of Christianity over other religions, including Judaism, Islam and Paganism. In these discussions, the characters of Klingsor and Kundry have been identified as the non-Christian figures who are either excluded, killed off or converted to Christianity.

Many scholars have also used the same argument from an anti-racist perspective by examining the characters’ ethnic heritage. In the original score of Act 1, Kundry is described as a wild woman with uncontrollable movements, a snake skin girdle, black hair, dark and piercing eyes and a ruddy-brown complexion. In the early productions, Kundry’s face was even painted darker – however, this is not practiced any more. Her language is also oddly fragmented in both text and music which places her as a strange element among the Germanic Grail knights.

The Grail knights clearly fear Kundry which comes forth in their descriptions of her as a wild beast and a sorceress. Furthermore, they continue to refer to her and Klingsor as coming from “Arabia” – an area which for a modern audience sounds diffuse but would have given a 19th-century German audience strong associations to the at the same time dangerous and exotic Orient.

The threat of these two characters also lies in their active sexual drives which stands in sheer contrast to the chaste Grail knights’. We are told that Klingsor once strongly wished to join the sacred realm of the Grail but was not able to control his sinful desires and ultimately emasculated himself. However, he was excluded nonetheless and then created a wondrous garden in which beautiful flower maidens could lure knights to eternal damnation.

In Wagner’s version, the magical garden of Klingsor is in Arabic style and placed on a mountain side facing Moorish Spain. Furthermore, the seductive flower maidens are clad in soft-coloured veils. In other words, they also represent an Arabic, non-Christian world.

If one includes the historical context, it becomes evident that the Grail knights represent the violent Medieval Crusaders who invaded large parts of the non-Christian world in the name of Christianity. In this way, they are not placed in the most sympathetic light – especially when their selfishness and aggressiveness is as clearly depicted as it is in Parsifal.

Klingsor is, of course, not viewed in the best light either when we see him demand Kundry to work for him as his principle slave seductress in Act 2. She refuses several times with tormented screams and moans but has to give in to his magical powers in the end. At the same time, we cannot help to feel sorry for Klingsor who was brutally excluded by the Grail knights even though he emasculated himself for them. His tragic situation is also presented in a monologue which Wagner gives him in the beginning of Act 2.

During the next scene, Kundry is transformed to a beautiful young woman in Arabic garments after which she sublimely triumphs the flower maidens’ failed attempt to seduce the young hero Parsifal, as well as the audience. Kundry also manages to give the young boy a passionate kiss. However, they do not continue much further before Parsifal throws himself from her in disgust and screams: “AMFORTAS! THE WOUND! THE WOUND!”

This reaction, which today often leads to a silent giggling among the audience members, was to be taken very seriously by Wagner. For Parsifal has at this place suddenly understood the shared human condition of suffering: desire. This same suffering – which is also the essence of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde from 1865 – is also what lies within the Grail king, Amfortas. For the king received his burning wound when he was likewise seduced by Kundry.

With this kiss, Parsifal not only feels the pain of Amfortas but is also transmitted the unstable music and language from Kundry. The work is divided musically between the stable Grail realm and the unstable magical realm. Parsifal, then, balances the music of these two realms through Kundry’s painful kiss.

Furthermore, Parsifal understands through the kiss that he must redeem mankind by promoting compassion. He also finds Amfortas in the Grail realm and heals his wound in the final scene. And Kundry is invited to take part in the Grail rituals which was previously solely for men.

Parsifal can, then, be read as an inclusive work if directors would stage the work’s non-Western elements. The German opera director Uwe Eric Laufenberg did it in Bayreuth this year and describes Parsifal as being a “pan-religious” or “post-religious” work. In other words, a work which does not promote a single religion but instead a progressive panhumanist spiritual project – across religion, race and gender. With the issues we face in society today, including a growing xenophobia in the Western world, Parsifal stands as Wagner’s most important and relevant work.

This post is an English translation of my feature from the Danish newspaper Berlingske (August. 6, 2016) Some elements have been changed.