To me, Parsifal is a curate's egg of a piece.  It combines some of Wagner's most inspired music eg the Act 1 Transformation scene with some of the most banal - the truly appalling male glee club writing for the Knights of the Grail.  I don't find the piece misogynistic but I guess that you can find it if you look. Isn't it simply another of RW's takes on folklore and legend?  Something that always fascinated him, to our considerable advantage. 

Cosima's diaries have a great deal on Parsifal and everything else, usefully cross referenced but they don't tell you as much as listening and using your own sensibilities.  It is after all music.
 

In that case it looks like now is about the time to mention that if memory serves me correctly some versions of the story have the unhealing spear-wound not in Amfortas' side but in his, er, nether regions. A few more subtexts there...

Oooh dear, so he caught a dose of the clap from Kundry?  And of course, he blames her?  This whole mysogyny maze is becoming less and less palatable as we explore it further


PARSIFAL seems to have been left behind in the "I know, they're all loonies who THINK they're the Knights Of The Grail!" genre of productions  I'm not entirely surprised, because it's such a costly show to do...  they can't afford to have a "now, how to amuse them today?" production.  Moreover, those most likely to turn up are the humourless harridans of the Wagner Society,  who generally prefer productions in which no-one moves or does anything, in costumes which are copies of those approved by Der Meister himself

As I said earlier, the opera hasn't actually GOT much in the way of action, so it's hard to see what little there is could be reinterpreted in any significantly different way (unless you went for some skewball gonzo approach, that is).  The ENO production of the mid-1980s had Parsifal moving around the stage on what appeared to be a giant motorised piece of gorgonzola cheese...  but I think this was merely hapless coincidence, rather than any intention to introduce a "cheesey" element into the story

If I'm absolutely honest with myself, I know that Parsifal is actually about a bunch of cross-dressing queens who like playing S&M games with sharp phallic objects; but it helps my enjoyment to pretend otherwise.

There's a nagging feeling at the back of my mind that this has been done (but I'm at work and I have yet to find a suitable phrase to put into Google that will get past the "inappropriate content" filter*).

On the other hand, older operatic lags here may remember Vickers singing Tristan at Covent Garden wearing what appeared to be a purple frock and platform shoes ... and he was still magnificent.

(* putting in the word "drag" tends to come up with references to the tempi of certain celebrated German conductors  )

SK & Don Basilio         

I browzed it in a bookshop yesterday and it seemed immensely readable.  I will get it when I am sure I will get round to reading it pronto.

The nugget I remember was how Wagner became respectable and a king and two emperors visited Bayreuth at the same time.  The Emperors were of Germany and Brazil.

The Emperor of Brazil was traveling incognito.  When he came to write in the visitors' book at his Bayreuth hotel, he entered his occupation as "emperor".