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Speranza
A Parsifal Chronology
April-May 1857: RW writes a prose sketch (TEXT I), now lost.
27 June
1857: RW breaks off work on Siegfried to concentrate on Tristan und
Isolde.
October 1858: RW's thoughts return to Parsifal and Die Sieger.
He
writes to Mathilde Wesendonk about compassion, the Buddha, art and redemption.
Countess d'Agoult sends him a Chinese statue of the Buddha.
May 1859:
RW reads
Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival in a new edition sent to him by Mathilde
Wesendonk.
He writes to tell her that Wolfram understood nothing of his subject.
RW will have to invent everything, keeping the sublime purity of Parsifal in the
foreground.
August 1860:
RW completes Tristan. He writes to Mathilde Wesendonk
about reincarnation and purity.
He describes Lohengrin as a reincarnation of
Parsifal who inherits his father's purity.
In another letter RW tells her that,
once he had realised that the seductress of the second act of Parsifal was the
same Kundry we saw in the first act, everything had fallen into place.
27-30
August 1865:
At King Ludwig's request RW writes the first prose draft (TEXTS II
and III) of Parsifal.
He considers alternative treatments of the spear, which
had by now become a unifying element of the story.
25 January to 23 February
1877:
RW writes the second prose draft (TEXT IV).
He makes only minor changes.
The
spear that stops in mid-air is added to the second act.
Titurel no longer rises
from the dead at the end of the last act.
14 March 1877: RW changes the name of
the hero from Parzival to "Parsifal".
19 April 1877: RW completes the poem or
libretto (TEXT V).
August 1877: Wagner begins the Act 1 composition
sketch.
8 to 21 October 1877: Cosima makes a fair copy of the poem or libretto
(TEXT VI).
1 December 1877: Wagner finishes correcting the proofs of the poem
or libretto (TEXT VII) and sends it to be printed.
22 December 1877: Wagner
receives a printed copy of the poem or libretto from the publisher, Schotts. The
libretto is dated 1877 (TEXT IX).
29 January 1878: Completion of the Act 1
composition sketch (Erster Gesamtentwurf).
31 January 1878: Completion of Act 1
orchestral sketch (Zweiter Gesamtentwurf).
Wagner had developed a working method
in which he would go back and forth between the two-stave composition sketch and
the more detailed, short-score, orchestral sketch, the latter lagging by a few
days.
30 September 1878Completion of Act 2 composition sketch.
13 March to
11 October 1878Composition of Act 2 orchestral sketch.
30 October 1878 to 16
April 1879Composition of Act 3 composition sketch.
14 November 1878RW begins
the Act 3 orchestral sketch.
25 December 1878 (Cosima's birthday)Performance
of the Prelude to Act 1 (Urfassung mit Konzertschluss: MUSIC IV) by the
Meiningen orchestra at Haus Wahnfried.
16 April 1879
Wagner marks the (few)
changes he has made to the words during the composition of the music, on six
pages of the printed libretto (TEXT VIII).
26 April 1879Completion of the Act
3 orchestral sketch.
23 August 1879 to 25 April 1881Full orchestral scoring
of Act 1.
22 May 1880
Wagner's family and some close friends (Rubinstein,
Plüdderman, Humperdinck) celebrate his birthday by performing a chorus from the
Act I Grail scene: Den sündigen Welten. (See Humperdinck's memoirs for an
account of this event).
6 June to 20 October 1881Full orchestral scoring of
Act 2.
5 November 1881 to 13 January 1882Full orchestral scoring of Act
3.
26 July 1882First performance, Bayreuth Festspielhaus.
1 January 1914. Prima, Bologna, Giuseppe Borgatti, title role. "Parsifal: dramma mistico in tre atti". 50 more performances follow in different European theatres between January and August -- such was the demand. The second after Bologna was at the Costanzi, Roma, also Jan. 1, 1914.
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