Speranza
Both Richard and Cosima
Wagner hinted that there were secrets in Parsifal.
Certainly, it is a work with
many levels, dimensions and external references.
One of the most fascinating of
these references is to an opera by another composer who had at one time been
Wagner's mentor and benefactor.
It has been suggested that Wagner had modelled
the second act of Parsifal upon part of an opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer.
If so,
was it because Wagner trying to convey some message about the relationship of
his Gesamtkunstwerk to the operatic tradition?
Or does it have more to do with
his relationship to Meyerbeer?
Although
Meyerbeer had encouraged and promoted the young Wagner, the younger composer
came to resent his erstwhile patron.
It seems that this resentment festered into
virulent anti-Semitism, as expressed in the essay Das Judentum in der Musik
(Judaism in Music).
In Wagner's letters to Meyerbeer, he addresses his patron in
terms of adulation and self-abasement. Several of them begin with My deeply
revered Lord and Master.
In one of these letters he wrote:
... you will
readily understand me when I tell you that I weep tears of the deepest emotion
whenever I think of the man who is everything to me, everything ... But my head
& my heart are no longer mine to give away, - they are your property, my
master; - the most that is left to me is my two hands, - do you wish to make use
of them? - I realise that I must become your slave, body & soul, in order to
find food and strength for my work, which will one day tell me of my gratitude.
I shall be a loyal & honest slave ...
[Richard Wagner to Giacomo
Meyerbeer, 3 May 1840; tr. Spencer and Millington]
It is not surprising that
Wagner looked back upon his relationship to Meyerbeer with repugnance. Wagner
tried to explain himself to Liszt.
Towards Meyerbeer my position is a
peculiar one. I do not hate him but he disgusts me beyond measure. This
eternally amiable and pleasant man reminds me of the most turbid, not to say
most vicious, period of my life, when he pretended to be my protector; that was
a period of connections and back stairs when we are made fools of by our
protectors, whom in our inmost heart we do not like. This is a relation of the
most perfect dishonesty; neither party is sincere towards the other; one and the
other assume the appearance of affection and both make use of each other as long
as their mutual interest requires it. For the intentional impotence of his
politeness towards me I do not find fault with Meyerbeer; on the contrary, I am
glad not to be his debtor as deeply as, for example, B[erlioz?]. But it was
quite time that I should free myself perfectly from this dishonest relation
towards him. Externally there was not the least occasion for it, for even the
experience that he was not sincere towards me would not have surprised me,
neither did it give me the right to be angry, because at bottom I had to own
that I had intentionally deceived myself about him. But from inner causes arose
the necessity to relinquish all considerations of common prudence with regard to
him. As an artist I cannot exist before myself and my friends, I cannot think or
feel, without realizing and confessing my absolute antagonism to Meyerbeer, and
to this I am driven with genuine desperation when I meet with the erroneous
opinion even among my friends that I have anything in common with with
Meyerbeer.
[Richard Wagner to Franz Liszt, 18 April 1851; tr. Francis
Hueffer]
Robert le Diable
Left: Meyerbeer's Robert
le diable. Lithograph by J. Arnout. ©Bibliothèque de l'Opéra,
Paris.
YouTube: Nonnes qui repose, Samuel Ramey
In view of
the above, it is most surprising to find that there are dramatic and musical
parallels between the third act of Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable, a work that
Wagner knew intimately from before his time in Paris (he conducted a performance
of the work in 1838), and the second act of Parsifal.
This has been demonstrated
by Walter Keller. [Tribschener Blätter, xxx, December 1971, pp.6-12; translated
in Wagner, v13 nr2, May 1992, pp.83-90.]
Parallels in Dramatic
Structure
The obvious parallels in the respective action of the two acts
suggests that Wagner was, either consciously or unconsciously, thinking of
"Roberto il diavolo" when he wrote his Prose Draft of 1865. Wagner had last heard
Meyerbeer's opera at the Paris Opera in 1860.
Keller lists the following
parallels.
Robert le diable ----- Parsifal
A hall in the ruined convent
of St. Rosalie, with cloisters to the right and a cemetery to the left. Centre
stage is a marble statue of St. Rosalie herself, holding a green cypress branch
in her hands.Klingsor's enchanted castle, in the inner dungeon of a tower that
is open to the sky. The foot of the tower is shrouded in darkness.
Scène et
évocation
Bertram, the prince of darkness, conjures up the shades of those
formed nuns who were unfaithful to their vows: Nonnes qui reposez sous cette
froide pierre, relevez-vous!Using his magician's powers, Klingsor conjures up
Kundry's soul; her spirit appears in the shadows. Herauf! herauf! Zu
mir!
Procession des nonnes
Swathed in their funerary shrouds, the nuns
rise slowly from their graves and, roused to a brief semblance of life,
foregather in the hall.In the blue light, Kundry's figure rises up. She seems
asleep. She moves like on awaking. Finally she utters a terrible
cry.
Récitatif
Bertram announces Robert's imminent approach and orders the
nuns to seduce him.Klingsor announces Parsifal's imminent approach and orders
Kundry to seduce him.
Bacchanale
The nuns cast off their veils, revealing
seductive dancing costumes underneath. They join in a lively bacchanale but
withdraw on Robert's entrance.Magic Maidens scene. From all sides rush in the
Flower maidens clad in light veil-like garments, first singly, then in groups,
forming a confused, many-coloured throng. They seem as though just startled out
of sleep.
Récitatif
Robert enters through the cloisters.Parsifal jumps
down into the garden.
Premier air de ballet
The nuns attempt to seduce
Robert by plying him with drink.
Deuxième air de ballet
The nuns attempt
to seduce Robert through gambling.
Troisième air de ballet
They try to
seduce him through love.The maidens deck themselves with flowers. They dance in
a graceful, childlike manner about Parsifal, caressing him gently. Parsifal is
at first fascinated and then repelled by them: Lasst ab! Ihr fangt mir
nicht!
Although the abbess Hélène succeeds in persuading Robert to drink and
gamble, he recoils from the cypress branch. Finally, however, drunk with love,
he steals a kiss from the abbess, then tears the branch from the statue's hands
and disappears through the cloisters.Parsifal attains to knowledge through
Kundry's kiss. He repulses her.
Choer dansé
Demons rise up out of the
ground, seize the nuns and disappear with them underground. The nuns' shrouds
remain lying on the floor of the stage.Parsifal catches the Spear which has been
hurled at him, whereupon the castle falls as by an earthquake. The garden
withers to a desert; the ground is scattered with faded flowers. Kundry sinks
down with a cry. Parsifal, hastening away, pauses on top of the ruined wall, and
turns back to Kundry. Du weisst, wo du mich wieder finden kannst! He hastens
away.
Parallels in Key Structure
What is more surprising, however, is
the discovery that the key structure of the two Stollen (in Lorenz's analysis)
of the second act of Parsifal, follows the key structure of the finale to act 3
of Robert. Keller lists the following parallels.
Robert le
diableParsifal
NumberKeyPeriodBarsActionKey
Conjurationb
minor11-131Conjurationb minor
2132-193Awakeninge flat minor
Processionc
minor3194-213First refusalc minor
4214-267Klingsor's boastb
minor
5268-298Conjurationb minor
RecitativeE flat major6299-386Parsifal
storms the castleE flat major
Bacchanaled minor
BacchanaleD major (rel.
major)7396-426Klingsor's delusionsb minor
8427-498Arrival of maidensg
minor
RecitativeE flat major (rel. major)9499-520Noch nie sah ichc
minor
10521-702Maidens flirt with ParsifalA flat major
11703-735Du Zager
und KalterA flat major
Premier air de balletG major12736-805Departure of
maidensG major
Redemption
If this is a conscious reworking of
Meyerbeer, is then Wagner's Abgesang, the Tristanesque scene between Kundry and
Parsifal, intended to prove the superiority of Wagner's art? If we look for
them, references to Wagner's life and his quest for the Gesamtkunstwerk are not
hard to find in Parsifal: the near quotation of the Swan motif from Lohengrin in
the first act, and the allusions to Tristan, not least in the three periods
following the kiss. Perhaps the autobiographical message of Parsifal is that
Wagner had broken free of the spell cast upon him by his antithesis, his
Klingsor: Giacomo Meyerbeer.
One can become more sceptical about the
parallels that Keller claimed to have detected between Robert and Parsifal.
It
is quite possible, even likely, that the parallel in dramatic structure of the
corresponding parts of these two dramas arose by coincidence. It does not even
seem necessary to suppose an unconscious influence, although that too is a
possibility. What seems more likely, in my view, is that Wagner realised that
his scene with Parsifal and the magic maidens resembled Meyerbeer's scene with
Robert and the nuns -- and that he chose to emphasise, rather than conceal, the
parallel when he composed the music.
The tonal parallels too might be
coincidental. The tradition of associative tonality dictates that b minor is the
villain key, which Wagner therefore associates with Klingsor, while G major is
the mother-child key, which Kundry employs when she reminds the boy of his
mother. So in my opinion, the question of whether Parsifal contains real
references to Robert remains open.
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