Preface
I have always been somewhat baffled by Parsifal, and I don’t think it’s only me. After listening to a few puzzling productions, I finally put out an SOS after attending a performance at Bayreuth, where Klingsor was played by a bald-headed, monocle-wearing chap wearing white tie, but with nothing on below the waist except fishnet stockings (a none-too-subtle reference, I assumed, to his self-castration).
Roger Scruton had already written a marvellous short book on Tristan und Isolde. I did not then know him, but emailed him cold, to ask whether he might write a similarly revealing study of Parsifal.
This was about 15 years ago. We became friends. He did get round to writing his book on Parsifal, but sadly it was the last (of over fifty) before he died in early 2020. The Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation has been set up to honour and perpetuate his memory, writings and philosophy; I am the chairman of the UK charity.
I can think of no other reason why I should have been asked to give a lecture, on a visit in 2023 to Budapest, to the Common Sense Society about the opera and about Roger’s book. This essay is based on that talk, following which we saw a rather good performance at the Hungarian State Opera, and I was shown a letter in the chief executive’s office signed by Bartók and another hero of mine, Miklos Bánffy (see the essay “Hungary’s Tolstoy” elsewhere on this website). Bánffy was the Intendant of the State Opera and an early champion of the composer.
The discovery of connections between apparently unrelated subjects is one of the things that makes life worth living.