Parsifal's Promise or Parsifal's Reality? On the Politics of Voice Exchange in Wagner's Grail Operas

Without a doubt, the processes of exclusion and affirmation that come to a head at the close of the opera demand one's critical attention; given the potent cocktail of race, gender, and nationality that suffuses both the work and its reception, the ideological stakes could hardly be higher. Here, Minor discusses the promise enunciated in Richard Wagner's Parsifal, in relation to Lohengrin. Among other things, taking Parsifal seriously also demands the tracing of the work's implications for what happens next: for Parsifal, his progeny, and for the kind of community his installation as leader claims to provide. Moreover, the hermetic movement that exists between the two grail operas, though instructive, is also a fantasy. It retells operatic history according to the logic of the grail itself: time becomes space, losses can be recouped, dormant hopes can be reanimated. But this operatic fantasy is also deeply rooted in the same historical developments these operas' medieval provenance seems intended to deny. The circular movement between the two works--between the unfulfilled enthusiasms of the Vormärz and the straightened politics of the Gründerzeit (the eve of the 1848 revolution and the reign of Kaiser Wilhem I)--encapsulates a chronic ambivalence in Wagner's Germany. At the heart of this political tension is the elusive specter of the German Volk, just as the operatic tension centers on Wagner's chorus, caught as it is between a mythic past and a national future, and between the promise of Parsifal and the reality of Parsifal.