The Effect of Schopenhauer’s Compassionate Metaphysics on the Primary Characters of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal (original) (raw)
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While metaphysical, Schopenhauerian-based treatises abound on composer Richard Wagner’s music dramas Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, little evidence has surfaced of an equivalent study of his last work, Parsifal. Most circulating discussions on Parsifal, though they may acknowledge Schopenhauerian influence, do not go into significant metaphysical depth; nor have pieces surfaced that consider Parsifal from a purely Schopenhauerian approach. Thus, in this paper I argue that Parsifal is best viewed as a Schopenhauerian opera, my conclusion being based on the study of Schopenhauer’s primary writings on the Will and the metaphysics of compassion, and also on the study of the characterization, text, and music of Parsifal. The resulting argument offers Parsifal a place alongside Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg as the third and final of Wagner’s Schopenhauerian music dramas.
Redemption and Transformation: Making Sense of Richard Wagner's Parsifal
Religon and the Arts, 2016
The article discusses Richard Wagner’s last music-drama, which today is the traditional Good Friday “opera” in New York, Vienna, and other venues around the globe. I argue that Parsifal utilizes traditional Christian symbols and thereby transforms them, in order to help transform the world of the audience. The first part of the article summarizes the dramatic conflict and analyzes how the work appropriates the Christian symbolism of the Lord’s Supper. I also look at Wagner’s essay “Religion and Art,” which was written during the composition of Parsifal and presents an ethical critique of Christianity in the name of “true religion.” The second part of the article presents two assessments of Parsifal, both of which acknowledge its inherent religious symbolism but come to different conclusions regarding its significance (Christian versus atheistic). The third part of the article offers an alternative interpretation and implies trajectories for further research.
Philosophy's Betrayal of Wagner to Schopenhauer
This paper discusses how the philosophy of his time pushed Richard Wagner to the pessimism of Schopenhauer, turning what could have been one of the greatest and most life-affirming composers into one of the greatest yet life denying composers.
The interpretation of Richard Wagner's music drama Parsifal has been one of the most philosophically and theologically controversial. Over the years various interpretations have been given, among them Buddhist, Schopenhauer-ian, anti-Semite, and Christian. In this paper, I argue that this music drama is fundamentally a Christian work. I begin by discussing some methodological and background historical issues. I consider difficulties concerning bias in interpretation and the complicated intellectual life of Wagner, and propose to overcome these difficulties by testing various interpretations by their consistency with various parts of the music drama, and to interpret the statements of this music drama within that context. I then argue that Parsifal reflects the soteriological concepts of sola gratia, sola fide and sola Christus that are unique to Christianity but inconsistent with other interpretations. Finally, I address various objections to my Christian interpretation.
2016
Throughout the course of this thesis, I examine the evidence of racial, religious and gender discrimination in Richard Wagner’s final music drama, Parsifal (1882). The question is how and with what effects these forms of discrimination are constructed. In other words, does the work promote or simply “just” dramatize discrimination, and what are the consequences of these actions? Furthermore, how should opera directors today tackle these evident forms of discrimination? In short, how can Parsifal still be acceptable and even relevant to produce today? I examine Parsifal broadly and interdisciplinarily as both a historical document – i.e. Richard Wagner’s original music score, libretto, stage notes and photographs from 1882 – and as a contemporary, live performance – i.e. the British director Keith Warner’s staging of Parsifal at the Royal Danish Opera from 2012. This, I believe, is essential in order to explore the work’s constructions of gender, racial and religious stereotyping and discrimination in its semiotic and performative interplaying dimensions – a methodological approach inspired by German theatre theorist Erika Fisher-Lichte. From a semiotic perspective, inspired by theorists such as Zygmunt Bauman, Simone de Beauvoir, Edward W. Said, Catherine Clément, Susan McClary and Herbert Lindenberger, I examine how the work reproduces and subverts stereotypes of the binary opposition between the norm and the Other in both the musical score, libretto and visual elements. From a performative approach, inspired by theorists such as Judith Butler, Erika Fisher-Lichte and Carolyn Abbate, I examine how these stereotypes are performed and subverted in the work as a staged (i.e. live visual, sounding and sensory) performance and experience. I show how Parsifal can indeed be read as a critique of racial, religious and gender discrimination - and go further to suggest that the work endorses an inclusion of the Other, symbolically represented in the characters Klingsor, Kundry and through the means of musical chromaticism. We move from Act 1 in which the Other is excluded, to Act 2 in which we are in the realm of the Other and finally to Act 3 in which the Other is included in the realm and characters. It is in this fact that I view Parsifal as a highly relevant work to produce today. Furthermore, this places Parsifal as a work embodying strong socio-political potentials. Directors today should then not shy away from staging Klingsor and Kundry as the Other, that being any supressed group of identity to fully embrace this subversive potential.
The Myth of Parsifal in Wagner's Telling
An investigation into the significance of the changes made to previous versions of the myth of Parsifal by Richard Wagner, as he prepared to compose his stage-consecration-festival-play. Written in response to a performance of Parsifal by Welsh National Opera in 2003, and to the Cambridge Music Conference on the theme of 'Grail Narratives' in 2006.
The paper focuses on the visual representation of death in Wagner's Parsifal analyzing the first act of a production staged by director François Girard for Metropolitan Opera in March 2013. We chose this specific production in order to better emphasize Wagner's visual and narrative representations of death borne from an aesthetics that integrates multiple forms of art. A central theme in Wagner's creation, the meaning and function of death gradually changes from earlier operas like The Flying Dutchman and Tannhäuser where death is present mainly as a form of sacrifice, of atonement for the other (where death retains mainly a narrative function) to the later stage of his creation when his approach on death changes dramatically. Death ceases to be a narrative form (ritual) of sacrifice and becomes more of a visual form of mourning. His last opera, Parsifal is a testament to both life and death. The aim of our paper is to show what this testament implies narratively and visually and how death prompts a continuous visual montage where both pagan and Christian symbols are deconstructed and employed as symptoms.