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We suggest further works to explore after hearing Wagner’s Parsifal
Written 30 years before Parsifal, Wagner’s Lohengrin was also inspired by Wolfram’s medieval epics. Here we see Wagner moving away for the first time from the traditional operatic format – distinct recitatives, arias and choruses – to the through-written style that would define his later works. With Parsifal’s son, a Knight of the Grail, as its eponymous hero, Lohengrin’s plot is every bit as complex, its musical journey (including the ‘Bridal Chorus’) just as involving. (Johan Botha et al/ Semyon Bychkov Profil Medien PH09004).
As a young man, Humperdinck assisted Wagner in the publication and first production of Parsifal at Bayreuth. The great man’s influence, not least the use of distinctive leitmotifs, can be heard in Humperdinck’s own Hansel and Gretel, which also features German folksong in its intoxicating musical mix. The plot needs no introduction, of course. (Jennifer Larmore et al/donald Runnicles Teldec 2564688082).
Humperdinck was the bridge from one generation to the next, as he later taught Siegfried Wagner, Richard’s son. Well aware of the dangers of trying to emulate his father, Wagner Jnr
Die toten Augen sensuously chromatic as it is richly orchestrated
sensibly pitched his operatic ambitions a little lower. His most famous opera, 1896’s Brothers Grimm-inspired Der Bärenhäuter, weaves its narrative engagingly as it tells the tale of Hans, a soldier who, tricked by the Devil, must wander around in a dirty bearskin until he can find someone who will love him for three years. (Volker Horn et al/konrad Bach Marco Polo 8223713-14).
Though opera soon headed in new directions after Parsifal, a handful of
Wagner-inspired is as composers continued to echo his soundworld. One was the Scottishborn Eugen d’albert, whose 1912 Die toten Augen (‘The Dead Eyes’), a story of miracles, love and bitter jealousy in Roman-era Jerusalem, is as sensuously chromatic as it is rich in its orchestration. (Olaf Bär et al/ralf Weikert CPO 9996922).
Another Wagner admirer was the unashamedly old-fashioned Hans Pfitzner. Premiered in 1895, the German’s first opera Der arme Heinrich (‘Poor Heinrich’) is, like Parsifal, a tale of a Medieval knight in search of salvation. As one commentator neatly put it, the music is ‘distinctly pre-raphaelite’. (Karl Heinz Lehner et al/ Alexander Rumpf Capriccio C60087).