It might be thought a touch hubristic, not to say risky, to add new layers of mystery to a work as notoriously enigmatic as Wagner’s Parsifal. In fact, Jetske Mijnssen’s revelatory production contributes fresh insights by doing just that. The community of Grail knights becomes here an atrophied dynastic family. Titurel, nearing death, is the ruling patriarch who favoured one son (Amfortas) over another (Klingsor). The wound dealt Amfortas by Klingsor can only be healed by an outsider to the family, Parsifal.
But Parsifal, viciously assaulted by the family’s retainers (the Grail knights), is the mere instrument: the redemption lies in the rehabilitation of a penitent Klingsor, who returns like a Prodigal Son. What he and Parsifal questionably offer Amfortas, however, is not healing as such, but a peaceful “gift of death”. The family is simultaneously released from the curse of vengeance.
