Parsifal - Bayreuther Festspiele 1955

Wieland Wagner's production of Parsifal was performed at the Bayreuth Festival every year from 1951 to 1973. This makes it the longest-running production of Parsifal on the Bayreuth programme following the world premiere of 1882, which ran until 1933. Wagner's opera opened the first post-war festival on the 30th of July, 1951, the day after the former Bayreuthian Wilhelm Furtwängler had performed Beethoven's IX Symphony. Hans Knappertsbusch, who at 63 was no longer a young man, was rather perplexed by Wieland's production. During rehearsals, he had assumed that the stage sets were yet to come, and mentioned this to an audience member, probably only half-jokingly, who had similarly criticised precisely the lack of these. Parts of the German press were also irritated. Hans Schnor wrote in the Westfalen Blatt that "what the grandson of the master conjures up for us is... a shapeless play of schemes and shadows", dispensing with individual dramatic references, constantly simply symbolising and therefore becoming tedious over time.