John Yohalem was at the Met's Wagner Parsifal. Here's a link to his review in parterre :
"The assembled folk, male and female still divided, unenlightened, appear for the funeral of Titurel ....Their utter demoralization in this featureless, storm-clouded landscape for once seems proper for their bitter and ungenerous attack on desperate, pain-wracked Amfortas. I’ve always felt, at that point, that the Knights of the Grail, for all their supposed sanctity, sure don’t demonstrate much Christian (or basic) generosity towards a fellow Knight’s suffering—but that may have been exactly Wagner’s point: Dogma without the personal attainment of compassion is never enough. It’s tough to out-think someone who thought as elaborately as Wagner."
So much about the Knights of the Grail contradicts Christianity. Is Wagner taking the mickey out of religion just as he contradicts capitalism, paternalism, heroism and so much else in the Ring?
"The assembled folk, male and female still divided, unenlightened, appear for the funeral of Titurel ....Their utter demoralization in this featureless, storm-clouded landscape for once seems proper for their bitter and ungenerous attack on desperate, pain-wracked Amfortas. I’ve always felt, at that point, that the Knights of the Grail, for all their supposed sanctity, sure don’t demonstrate much Christian (or basic) generosity towards a fellow Knight’s suffering—but that may have been exactly Wagner’s point: Dogma without the personal attainment of compassion is never enough. It’s tough to out-think someone who thought as elaborately as Wagner."
So much about the Knights of the Grail contradicts Christianity. Is Wagner taking the mickey out of religion just as he contradicts capitalism, paternalism, heroism and so much else in the Ring?
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