Barcelona Parsifal

Between Opera and Reality: The Barcelona "Parsifal"
Author(s): Catharine Macedo

Source: Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Mar., 1998), pp. 97-109
Published by: Cambridge University Press
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Cambridge Opera Journal 10, 1, 97-109 ? 1998 Cambridge University Press
Between opera and reality: the Barcelona

Parsifal
CATHARINE MACEDO
At midnight on 31 December 1913 the low string melody of P

upwards in the Teatre Liceu, Barcelona. That year-turn ma
copyright period within which performances of Parsifal ou
prohibited, and made Barcelona the first city in the conventi
stage Parsifallegally. Of course, the timing was a marketing ploy, b
also a gesture of outreach, of stretching beyond the mountain
Iberian peninsula and of hoping to become a credible cultural
in northern Europe. Alas for Barcelona, Europe didn't notic
By considering the musical activity of Barcelona - the
Catalonia, northern Spain- I may seem to be approaching
marginalised. In the sense that Spain has always been estra
simply on the wrong side of the Pyrenees even when it
Continent, this is indeed true. On the other hand, Barcelona h
mountains, at least to redraw this boundary in the minds of
Catalonia lay on the other side of the division from Madrid, wh
country's failings. Indirect efforts towards this re-mappi
the 1840s in a cultural movement known as the Renaixenfa, o
the realisation of Catalan cultural and political autonomy becam
1890s, Renaixenfa images no longer seemed able to support mod
movement largely gave way to Modernism - less a stylistically
than a Catalanist token of praise or derision.2 This article cha
that illusory world of Modernism before alighting on thr
reception of Parsifal- its appropriation in the first decade of t
Messianism with which it was involved in 1902 and finally
performance itself. Along the way I will discuss how attempts
Catalan identity from that of Spain allowed opera to influenc
'real world', and how boundaries between art and life were man
and personal ends. The writer Marti i Julia voiced the matter
From things one says and things one reads, simple people can arrive
civilisation and art are the same thing ... I do not rebuke art but I o
Lucy Beckett, Parsifal, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge, 1981),

rush to perform Parsifal after the copyright had expired (Barcelona is n
2 Albert Balcells, Catalan Nationalism, trans. Jacqueline Hall (Basingstoke
a historical overview of the Renaixenfa and Modernism from the Catalan
Much is written in Catalan about Modernism, though Joan-Lluis Marfany
Modemisme (Barcelona, 1975), still provides one of the most thoughtful
discussions of the subject. Xose Avifioa, La Musica i el Modemisme (Barc
main work on music. For a useful selection of texts see Jordi Castellanos
Seleccid de Textos (Barcelona, 1988). I use the term 'Modernism' in its br
denoting anything in this period that is clearly not Renaixenfa as 'Moderni
98 Catharine Macedo
tendency of 'Dilletantism', which makes virility feeble, stultifies the spirit and converts
individuals and communities into impotent social beings.3
'Simple people' they may have been, but the consequences of this 'dangerou
tendency' could be devastating. On the opening night of the 1893 winter season a
the Liceu, Rossini's Guillaume Tellwas billed, a favourite for much of the audienc
During the first interval two bombs were thrown from the top and cheapest floor
killing twenty-two and wounding thirty others.4 The anarchist bomber, Salvador
made music a vehicle to carry ideology to political activity: he retold Tell's story
performatively by turning the revolutionary entertainment into anarchic reality, a
in this way executed Bakunin's ideal of propaganda by deed. Salvador's violen
outburst scandalised the general public; on closer inspection the activities of som
of Barcelona's Wagnerians, although less violent, were almost as dangerous.
1 Wagner, a Modernist rose
Wagnerism in early twentieth-century Barcelona was largely synonymous wit

Catalanism, which by this stage was a political movement driving for Catala
political autonomy; the cultural branch of this was often termed Modernisme. Th
inability or lack of desire to differentiate between real life and opera was part of
crisis in the Modernist will to recognise certain realities, one of which was the failu
of Catalonia to become part of Europe - the failure to move the Pyrenean border
Will slowly ebbed away as social tension mounted. Strikes and high-profile anarchis
bombings racked the city in the 1890s, prompting the foreign press to du
Barcelona the 'city of bombs'. This discontent culminated in 1898 when the loss o
Cuba (Spain's last significant colony) and the spectacular naval defeat by Nort
America incited the Spanish press to award the year a tite history has remembered
the Desastre Nacional, or National Disaster. But as Spain left mainstream European
politics with a final crash, Catalanist activity intensified, despite a waning desire t
address pressing social problems. Many artists, particularly those of vitalis
orientation, nominally still produced 'political' art; but arty escapism tinted thes
images and ideas, so that while they still bore enough resemblance to everyd
experiences to be 'realist', they diverged sufficiently to acquire an aura of
remoteness. Periodically, both the creators and readers of these messages confuse
'reality' with its representations, a phenomenon that led to a general loss of faith
the 'realness' of life.
3 Extract from an article published on 6 December 1900 in the important bi-weekly Catalanist
journal, Joventut. Here, as elsewhere, all translations are my own unless otherwise stated, and
all proper names are given as their Catalan versions.
4 This is the version given in Gary McDonogh, Good Families of Barcelona (Princeton, 1986),
198-9. Retelling the event has itself been subject to a good deal of boundary blurring. Other
accounts vary in the number of bombs (sometimes three) and when the bombs were
thrown (sometimes the point in the opera in Act II where Tell and two friends swear to
free their country from the foreign yoke). It seems more likely that the two bombs (as most
versions give it) were thrown while people milled out of the auditorium for the interval:
though a less alluring conflation of opera and life, this provided better possibilities for
escape.
The Barcelona Parsifal 99
Joan Maragall, one of the most important cultural-political figures of Barcelona in

this period, was particularly attuned to the intangibility of this reality and its
Catalanist connection:
Other days in spring have roses, but on St George's day [Catalonia's saint's day] it seems
that everything is made of roses. We pick them in the garden or take them to market like
vows; we carry them in our hands with mysterious exaltation, and passing them, we
see them so elated, greeting each other with the half laugh of initiates at the beautiful
[formosa] feast.5
So much lay in these flowers - an image that adorns Catalan writing like confetti. In
their bunches and wreaths they sweetened the spirit of religious festivity; with their
petals lying in the roadside dust they recalled the carnage of anti-clericalism;
discarded and floating on the sea they evoked the tragic fatalism of Spain's demise;
and in the fragrant spring they brought bright hopes of Catalonia's regeneration. But
Maragall's experience of these flowers - so strongly associated with art that they
were a symbol of art itself- revealed the futility of his quest for 'real' reality as his
perception vacillated. Was 'everything made of roses' or were roses also made of
everything? The answer lay in people taking them 'to market like vows'- the vow
to regenerate Catalonia. Rather than everything 'made of roses' as a simple
expression that there were many roses everywhere, this suggests that the significa-
tion between roses and reality (art and life) flowed both ways: in the flowers he saw
Catalonia; in his world he saw roses, desirable as a symbol of Catalanism yet also
obscure and ominous, 'so elated ... with the half-laugh of initiates'. The
estrangement and remoteness inherent in his own Catalan spirit seemed an
inevitable consequence of the fact that whichever viewpoint he adopted there was
always the other position, equally viable and magnetically attracting.
Wagnerism, as Maragall might have said, was also made of roses.6 After a late start
in the early 1880s and a brief period of fashionability in the 1890s, the movement
came into bloom in 1901 when four medical students formed the Associacio
Wagneriana.7 Although its chairman, Joaquim Pena-Barcelona's most eminent
music critic -was more devoted to Wagner than to Catalonia, the bulk of its
members were active partisans of Catalanist institutions, giving the association
strong nationalist connections. Those who needed historical and territorial justifi-
cation for Catalanism found Wagner fruitful. His medievalism appealed to
influential musicians such as Anselm Clave and Felip Pedrell, who were both
interested in reviving Catalan folksongs, in keeping with the trend to compile
5 Italics mine. Maragall, 'Sant Jordi, Patr6 de Catalunya', Obres Completes (Barcelona, 1947),
637.
6 For Wagnerism see David C. Large and William Weber, eds., Wagnerism in European Culture
and Politics (Ithaca, 1984), though Spain is not covered. See also Julie Brown, 'Schoenberg's
Early Wagnerisms: Atonality and the Redemption of Ahasuerus', this journal, 6 (1994),
51-80, and Anna Dzamba Sess, Richard Wagner and the English (Rutherford, 1979), for
coverage of related topics in other countries.
7 See Alfonsina Janes i Nadal, L'Obra de Richard Wagner a Barcelona (Barcelona, 1983), for more
information on the Wagneriana.
100 Catharine Macedo
troubadour-style canfoners.8 Others were also fascinated by dark, Wagnerian forest

and craggy mountains, so unlike dry, infertile, southern Spain. Northern landscape
suggested that national personalities based on German scenery would be less barre
than those based on the vistas of south and central Spain. But this created
potential problem: when Modernists portrayed Wagner stalking the woods o
Saxony he was a symbol of the Germanic, yet when they re-created him wandering
along Catalan paths of roses that same Teutonism invited a German Otherness to
creep into the soil-based Catalan spirit and create an exciting interpretativefrisson a
elements of the two nations fought for control.9
Another important aspect of Wagner's reception in Spain was his intimat
relationship with Catholicism. Although most Modernists portrayed Madrid a
crippled under devotion to the institution of the Church, they were still Catholic. O
the other hand, some - generally the wealthiest - remained within institutionalised
ritual: the Wagneriana displayed its social orientation by holding its concerts in th
Catholic Association meeting house. But the marriage of Wagner and Catholicism
had already proved fractious. In 1897 the Bishop of Vic, Torras i Bages, threatene
by the proximity of Wagnerian and religious experience, had spoken out against
Wagner's 'use of metaphysics' - by which he meant that ideas such as redemption
infringed on the rightful territory of the Church.10 In 1902 Pena found himself
trying to untangle Wagner from the devil's embrace while maintaining th
Wagnerism was not an alternative religion.11 The effort was to no avail. As long as
Wagner remained controversial he was exciting; as Satan was more exciting than
God, Wagner and the devil remained wedded. In 1912 the writer Eugene d'Or
lucidly described Wagner's place in the Catalan imagination:
In the platonic world calendar, Wagner occupies the third column: that of the 'damn
angels', the Grand Enemies. But I should distinguish different types in the occupants of th
column. There are the repugnant Grand Enemies, as is Rousseau. There are the Gran
Enemies who are strictly to be hated, as is El Greco. There are also the admired Grand
Enemies, for example Spinoza. There are, finally, the Grand Enemies one loves, and
Wagner is one of these.12
D'Ors wittily consigned Wagner's memory to the fantasy world of Dante an

Ibsen, but this conflation of art, life and now the afterlife points to a more sinist
ideological current of the first decade of this century, now known as Messianism o
8 For Pedrell's biography, see Jose L6pez-Calo's article in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and
Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1980), XIV, 330-2; for Clave, see Guy Bourligueux's
article in The New Grove, IV, 457. Clave was the founder of the original Catalanist choir, the
Euterpe, and director of the first performance of Wagner's music in Barcelona; Pedrell,
devout Wagnerian and the self-proclaimed father of everything musical in Spain, exercised
wide influence as a teacher.
9 Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (London, 1995), provides a broad-ranging examination
of landscape in general, and dark woods in particular, as important elements in the
formation of north European nationalist ideologies.
10 Josep Torras i Bages, 'Del Verb Artistic', Obres Completes (Barcelona, 1948), 364-84.
11 Pena in Joventut, 3 (1902), 446-7, notes how in Spain people still talk of Wagner as if they
were talking of the devil.
12 Eugeni d'Ors, 'En el Centenari de sa Naixensa', Illustradio Catalana, 10 (1912), 407, quoted
in part in Janes, L'Obra de Richard Wagner, 144.
Hero-worship.13 Its theoretical basis lay in Carlyle's On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the
Heroic in History (published 1841, translated in the early 1900s), which describes the
belief that a Messiah holding a 'Divine idea of the world' will come to rescue the
oppressed and innocent. This need for a humanitarian Hero intensified as belief in
the unlimited potential of the human intellect faltered and the Church failed to
provide soteriological relief. Wagner, despite his Satanism, was an obvious Messiah.
D'Ors admitted dependence on him, capturing the overtones of Wagner as
Christ-on-Earth, in his confession that Wagner had been the 'sacred vice' of the
age.14 In this respect, Wagner created less of the polar oscillation Maragall
experienced, and more a simultaneous contradiction.
Lluis Millet, co-founder of the Orfe6 Catala choir, reflected similarly on Wagner's
bewitching powers: 'He has been the most penetrating charm of our age, he really
must have been because he was truly the expression of it- and us, we are fed and
modelled in that ambience, we were born there and it forms part of our spirit'.15 But
Millet, less flippant than d'Ors, seemed unable to locate Wagner's 'influence': was
it 'penetrating' the age, moving inwards, or was it an 'expression', moving outwards?
Millet's difficulties, like Maragall's, sprang from the enticing yet potentially
self-destructive inconsistency of the signification invested in the composer. Wagner
was an essence of the Catalan spirit yet a German Other, welcomed precisely for this
Otherness as evidence of Barcelona's efforts to become part of northern Europe.
But he was also a Messiah wedded to the devil and damned to Hell; a Hero and a
Grand Enemy; Absolute art yet the bringer of regenerative life; the embodiment of
the pure virginal landscape yet so charming and so desirable, a Modernist rose.
Where could a Modernist stand to extract this seemingly unconquerable Otherness
from experience?
2 On the slopes of Monsalvat
One position with the potential to alleviate these difficulties was an interpretative
stance on Parsifal. Set vaguely in northern Spain, many Modernists saw this opera as
a German work about Catalonia. Not only did it appear to traverse the barriers
between Spain and Saxony in a more satisfactory way than re-potting Wagner in
Catalan soil, it also afforded Catalans the pleasure of seeing themselves as a
geographical centre, by looking at a German opera (their cultural paradigm) and
seeing real-life Catalonia. The opening stage directions indicate:
The scene is laid first in the domain and in the castle of the Grail's guardians, Monsalvat,
where the country resembles the northern mountains of Gothic Spain; afterwards in
Klingsor's magic castle on the southern slope of the same mountains which looks towards
Moorish Spain. The costume of the Knights and Squires resembles that of the Templars: a
13 M. J. McCarthy, 'Catalan Modemisme, Messianism and Nationalist Myths', Bulletin of Hispanic

Studies, 52 (1975), 379-95, gives a perceptive overview of the Messianic colouring of
Modernism at this time.
14 Eugeni d'Ors, 'En el Centenari de sa Naixensa', 407.
15 Quoted in Janes, L'Obra de Richard Wagner, 150, from Lluis Millet, 'Transcendencia de la
moral en l'art', Revista Musical Catalana, 25 (1928), 199.
white tunic and mantle; instead of the red cross, however, there is a dove flying upwards on
scutcheon and mantle.16
Although reading this setting as Catalonia was an interpretative act, the possibility
that it could be other locations was quickly forgotten, as was Wagner's vagueness of
description (suggesting that he was not expecting the setting to be taken literally).17
Many aspects of Parsifal fitted Catalanist agendas in surprisingly appropriate ways.
This helped mask the difficulties of Wagner being part of the esperit nacional and a
German Other; it also enabled Modernists to forget that, for Wagner, Parsifals
location was little more than an evocation of the Orient. The general topography of
Parsifal also had a conceptual parallel in the racial theories of the Catalan writer,
Pompeu Gener, who adopted Orientalist conventions applied to the Spanish in
general and targeted them at the Castilians. He summarised the differences between
the Catalans and the Castilians in his influential essay, Heregias, published in 1888:
In the Center and the South [of Spain] ... there is too much of the Semitic element, and
more still of the pre-Semitic or Berber, with all its attributes: laziness, bad organisation,
wasting of time and life, caciquismo, hysteria, brutality and lack of balanced expression, and
the adoration of the Word.
But on the Catalans:
the elements of the Catalan race are - doing without the autocthonous, primitive elemen
the Celtic, the Greek, the Roman, the Gothic and finally the French. Strong ra
intelligent, energetic .. .18
The latent Orientalism of Wagner's south-facing castle ('south-facing' bot

physically and metaphorically), in Gener's version, attacks south and central Sp
in an exposition of inefficient and corrupt bureaucratic practices. Doubtless Ge
did not intentionally base his work on Parsifal, but the parallels nevertheless rem
Whilst the 'southern', 'hysterical' Klingsor castrates himself to curb his sex
desire, such measures are unnecessary for the pure, balanced Catalan race. A
while ancient southern cultures function merely as the guilty forefathers
generations of the sick and weak, Catalonia enters history seemingly of a virgin b
from every European empire from 3000 BC to the Middle Ages.
Monsalvat also became synonymous with the most holy of the Catalan h
mountains, Montserrat.19 The link was made explicit in 1910 in a troubadour-st
collection of Balades Wagnerianes by Muntadas y Roviras, the last poem being enti
16 Nicholas John, series ed., Parsifal, Opera Guides 34 (London, 1986), translation by Andrew
Porter, 84.
17 Wagner, in an early draft of Parsifal, before he fixed the location as northern Spain,
described Monsalvat as being 'in [a] wild, remote and inaccessible mountain forest'. See
Wagner, The Brown Book, trans. George Bird (London, 1980), 47.
18 Quoted in Josep Llobera, 'The Idea of Volksgeist in the Formation of Catalan Nationalist
Ideology', Ethnic and Racial Studies, 6 (1983), 332-50, 350n28. Alternatively see Gener,
Heregias (Barcelona, 1888), for full text in Catalan, or Gener, Cosas de Espaga. He!7ias
nacionales. El Renacimiento de Cataluia (Buenos Aires and Barcelona, 1903), for the Castilian
version.
19 Catalan spelling and grammar in this period was irregular, as the language had only been in
common use by literate people since the 1860s. Montserrat was often spelt 'Monserrat'.
'Monsalvat-Monserrat'. It is not clear when the boundary between the two

mountains began to be forgotten, but ambiguous instances date from the turn of the
century, many of which involve St George: for Catalan interpreters, although the red
cross of the knight's costumes is replaced by the dove, the cross is mentioned
specifically and significantly - St George, the patron saint of Catalonia, also wore a
red cross. Indeed, Josep Carner's poem, Parsifal, published in 1910, gathered the
threads of St George, roses and Parsifal by recalling Maragall's St George's day roses
(1909):
Anava Parsifalper un cami de flors,
y dansaven prop seu les dongelles - els cors
palpitants, y els cabells volant sobre les roses -
Y Parsifal, corn un infant veya les coses
rientes ...
[Parsifal was walking on a path of flowers, / and damsels were dancing around him - their
hearts / fluttering, and their hair falling on the roses - / And Parsifal, like a child, saw things
/ laughing. 20
The Wagnerian Salvador Vilaregut also found his attention drawn to the Flower
Maidens scene in Parsifal, while attending the 1902 Bayreuth season. Yet again, the
flowers reminded him of Catalonia. The flowers that adorned the slopes of
Monserrat and the evocation of them in one of Clave's most popular songs, Les
Flors de Maig (Flowers of May), led Vilaregut to write of: '[this] inexplicable quality
... [in] the look of the virgins and the soft perfumes that are exhaled from the
bunches of irises and roses from the month of May'.21 Seduced, as he later admitted,
he willingly submerged himself in a fluid semiotic world. Both Vilaregut and the
author of the Parsifal poem drifted slightly between the poles of art and Catalan
life by invoking the roses, but both basically stood outside opera, bringing the
experience of life to bear on art.
3 Miquel Domenech and other fallen knights
As long as Modernists took this position, seeing the real world in opera as they saw
Catalonia in Parsifal, they remained in control. Problems arose when they began, like
Maragall, to drift in and out of reality or, worse still, to anchor themselves inside
opera. By evaluating the world from an artistic viewpoint one could create moral
and social expectations that could never be fulfilled and were therefore doomed to
failure. One such unpromising hope was that someone, real or fictional, would be
called upon to become a Hero and rescue good Catalans from Castile's defilement
and a troubled esperit nacional. In July 1902 this Messianic shadow chose Parsifal:
Miquel Domenech Espanyol - critic, composer and musicologist - gave a short
seminar series to the Wagneriana entitled 'Parcival considerat com Apoteosi musical
de la Religio Catolica', later expanded into the book, L'Apotheose musicale de la religion
20 Published in Teatralia, 3 (1910), 344.

21 Salvador Vilaregut, 'Las Representacions del Parsifal a Bayreuth', Joventut, 3 (1902), 558.
Catholique: 'Parsifal' de Wagner.22 First published in French - Domenech presumably

hoped for success in Paris, but, like most Wagnerians, he could emulate Wagner's
pretentiousness better than his commercial acumen - L'Apotheose did not make it
across the Pyrenees. Barcelona was nevertheless scandalised. Virtually every idea in
the book was found contentious, but most inflammatory was the assertion that
Wagner, in writing Parsifal, had been the unwitting agent of the Holy Spirit. To
dismiss this as absurdity may be easy for us, but the vehemence of the outcr
revealed some of Modernism's deepest fears.
To understand how Domenech's reading formed part of Barcelona Messianism
one must look closely at his assignment of power to composers, critics, Wagner,
himself and, of course, God. According to Domenech, criticism is mainly ide
whereas composition is mainly sentiment. He reasons that because one can conceiv
of God (who is aesthetic perfection) better through idea than sentiment, then Go
must be primarily idea and idea must have greater aesthetic value than sentiment
The aesthetic value of music is heightened by criticism about it - criticism effectivel
adds idea, the Godly element, thus loosening the boundaries between art and
criticism. Now, although the process of composition is mainly concerne
with sentiment, there is usually enough idea for the composer to know what his
work is 'about', to understand its 'thesis'. The case of Parsifal, however, was
exceptional. Because Wagner was unknowingly inspired by the Holy Spirit, his own
interpretation of the opera was trivial in comparison to the greatness of the
message transmitted through him. Domenech, as the decoder of this message, felt
empowered.
Rather than oscillate between two distinct standpoints, like Maragall, Domenech
sought to dismantle all structures between himself and God, thus removing any
possibility of polarisation. He achieved this by asserting that the first-act prelude was
a symbolic representation of God recounting the history of Catholicism from the
Old Testament to the nineteenth century. This means that God is effectively
speaking through the opera. But, because the Word itself is God (as Domenech
believed), the opera must indeed be God. Hence, God, art and Wagner became as
one. If the purpose of criticism is to make music more in God's image (by adding
idea), then a work that already is God should not require criticism. Furthermore, if
criticism is the image of God, then critics themselves must also be godly. Needless
to say, Domenech considered his interpretation necessary, seeing himself in a
Messianic role, even if not quite such an exalted one as Parsifal.
22 Domenech is almost anonymous biographically. According to an article in Pena-Angles,

Diccionario de la Muisica Labor (Barcelona and Madrid, 1954), I, 744, he was born in 1865 and
was a pupil of Felip Pedrell and Claudi Martinez i Imbert. He was elected a musical
director of the Associacid Wagneriana in 1904, a position which mainly involved playing
reductions of Wagner's works on the piano. L'Apotheose musicale de la religion Catholique:
'Parsifal' de Wagner (Barcelona, 1902) was dedicated to Pena and translated into French by
Jules Villaneau. The dates of Domenech's seminars, according to the collections XXV
Conferencias Donades a la Assoiaidd Wagneriana (Barcelona, 1908), 494, were 16, 23, and
30 October 1902. According to Janes, L'Obra de Richard Wagner, 95, they started on 17 July
1902. The dates of Pena's review of the book in Joventut indicate that the dates in XXV
Conferienas are incorrect.
By looking closer at the implications of Domenech's theory, one can see why
allowing normally distinct ideas and entities to amalgamate created a Messianic
monstrosity, even though Messianism was not automatically implied. Because the
Holy Spirit inspired Wagner's movements, it also indirectly inspired Parsifal's
actions: Wagner was effectively a puppet that moved Parsifal - it was as if the
composer's life were lived through his protagonist.23 To be a follower of Wagner,
a Wagnerian, you must therefore also be a follower of Parsifal, a Parsifalist.
Domenech indeed saw himself as such: 'As a believer, although unworthy, and as
a knight of the Grail, I am touched today [by God] to go to the defence of the
sacred castle'.24 And Domenech, viewing life from inside opera, was not alone: Pena
had already proudly declared himself a knight of the Grail, and much later,
Barcelona's leading tenor, Fransesc Vinas, founded a choir called Els Cavaliers del
Sant Graal.25 Domenech's reasoning was Messianic because he valued his own voice
as an adjunct to that of the God-opera, and hence aligned himself with God; by
channelling Wagner's life through Parsifal, Domenech turned opera into meta-
opera - a giant, subsuming phenomenon that encompassed real life and the theatre.
However, unlike Marti i Julia, who was so concerned about the confusion between
art and civilisation, Domenech advocated this confluence as the essence of
modernity: 'Music ... has more unity and variety, more thought and sentiment, and
this [music] is the modern quality, par excellence', he told the Wagneriana.26
Domenech's radical claims not surprisingly met a mixed reception, the most vocal
being from his detractors. His original papers given to the Wagneriana were quickly
countered by Guillem Aris; within days of publication, L'Apotheose acquired a
notoriety of which, no doubt, many were envious.27 Felip Pedrell, for instance,
described how a friend passed him a copy - the 'other commentary' as he tellingly
called it - under the table, as if it were a bribe or revolutionary manifesto.28 But the
most sustained and potentially damaging attack came from the editorial board of
Joventut (with the exception of Pena), headed by its general editor, Lluis Via.29 The
polemic began after Via published an article attacking the idea of thesis in art.
Domenech took this to be personally directed at his Parsifal papers. On one level,
the dispute was over the role of the critic. On another, it was a hostile assertion of
Via's right to power in the face of Domenech's threatening Messianism. Via's main
23 Clearly, as a Wagnerian, Domenech was not likely to suggest that Wagner's life was lived
through Klingsor. The other feasible alternative, Amfortas (a saviour-figure fallen to vice, as
Wagner was often portrayed), would have been unappealing to Domenech's Maragallian
vitalism.
24 Domenech, 'La Tessis en el Parsifal de Wagner', Joventut, 3 (1902), 479-83, here 479.
25 Pena's declaration is in 'Clar i Catala', Joventut, 1 (1900), 115. See Janes, L'Obra de Richard
Wagner, 271, for information on Viiias's choir.
26 Domenech, 'La Musica', in XXV Conferencias, 375-436, here 428.
27 Aris's paper 'Conferencia en Refutaci6 d'algunes Afirmacios del senyor Domenech sobre
Parsifal' was also read to the Wagneriana. Its existence is mentioned in the forward to XXV
Conferencias but the paper itself does not survive.
28 Pedrell, 'Nuevo Comentario sobre el Parsifal' in Musicalerias (Valencia and Madrid, undated),
70-5, 70.
29 The editorial board included Pompeu Gener, whose opinion of the matter was that 'critics
are eunuchs'.
attack was over a comparison Domenech had made betweenJoventut and Klingsor'
castle. Domenech had likened the magazine to the magician's dark world by
referring metaphorically to Joventut as a panoptic tower of evil risen among the
people of Barcelona.30 Clearly, Domenech used theatre as a yardstick on which to
base judgements; the editorial board were quick to satirise this. They glossed his
final Joventut article, 'Quatre Paraulas i Prou Tambe', with footnotes in which the
pretended to be the fallen knights of Klingsor's castle - though their capricious
humour is more disturbing in its own Messianic overtones than it is amusing.31 To
the article's title, they appended the following:
And having in his hands the aforementioned article ['Quatre Paraulas], Knight Via said to
us, 'Knights and associates of Klingsor: we are gathered here today in my office for you to
hear what I have to say. We have knowledge that a knight of the Holy Grail, once strong
and courageous, now soft in the head, claims to be moved by senyor Holy Spirit and has pu
me into deep conflict, having sent me a long sermon to print in the pages of our
Joventut- Klingsor's Official Gazette.'32
After reviewing Domenech's book, Pena resigned his position atJoventut in protest
That this parody was taken so seriously by someone considered to be of sound mind
points not only to the seriousness of the polemic but also to the relative normality
of interpretative positions located within art in intellectual Barcelona during this
period. Indeed, six years later in 1908-two years after Joventut had ceased
publication owing to lack of funds - the Wagneriana published a selection of lectur
read to the association; Domenech's papers were omitted.33 The book version
L'Apotheose, and Aris's reply to the original papers were mentioned only as furthe
reading, though significantly they were the only texts suggested for this purpose.
The compilers clearly thought it prudent to avoid reinflaming the memory o
Domenech's and Klingsor's polemic.
4 The Barcelona Parsifal
After the Messianic heights of 1902 one might expect truly stratospheric derang
ment by 1913. But it was not to be. A broad rift now separated those intrigued b
the vacillations of contradictory viewpoints and those of more mundane tempera
ment, though far fewer were now attracted to the fluid possibilities that Wagneris
offered. In 1913 when Pena and Vinias proposed giving open air productions o
Parsifal and Greek tragedies at the monastery of La Piedra in a new attempt
30 Domenech, 'La Tessis en el Parsifal de Wagner', 479.

31 'Quatre Paraulas i Prou Tamb', Joventut, 3 (1902), 501-4. Joventut professed to have an
open editorial policy, though in practice this was open only in a limited sense, as
Domenech's experience revealed. This colonisation of his article also points to an aspect of
Modernism rarely remarked upon, that of the obligation and coercion to fit in.
32 This is the opening of the first footnote. There are forty-five in total.
3 This collection is XXV Conferencias. Domenech, however, continued revising his thesis on
the Holy Spirit, slowly publishing a series of articles under the general heading 'Parsifal and
Sherlock Holmes', where he spoke through the mouth of the famous detective as he
'discovered' the significance of the leitmotifs.
Messianise the opera, lack of support caused the venture to be abandoned.34 The
idea of being the first city in the world to stage Parsifallegally was, however, of much
wider appeal.
The critical reception of the Barcelona Parsifal is characterised by a contrast
resulting from this rift. However, accounts of the performance preparations suggest
that all parties exploited Parsifal's location for commercial and historical gain. We
largely depend on articles by a reporter, Torres, in the Castilian paper Espana Nueva,
though it is unclear whether he came by the information legitimately or simply
fabricated it (in true Wagnerian spirit).35
Barcelona, aiming for world recognition by staging Parsifal, wanted to ensure that
it would indeed be first. Starting the performance at midnight, according to
Torres, was the idea of the director of the Liceu, senyor Volpini, as was that
moment's dating as 24:00 on 31 December 1913 rather than 00:00 on 1 January
1914 - the date of the copyright expiry. Clearly it was preferable for history to
remember the earlier date and the performance could be deemed to begin on 31
December without breaking the restrictions by ensuring that although the first
note began at midnight, the audience arrived beforehand. Ironically, audience
participation in the form of rustle and bustle before the concert (normally
one of the Wagneriana's bugbears, particularly when it happened during the
performance) became an indispensable part of the Work - a pre-prelude a la 4'33".
Volpini may have been detached and mercenary, as some Wagneriana members
claimed, but he nevertheless recognised the cultural importance of such small
manipulations.
At the same time, he was initially unconvinced that allowing the interpretation of
Parsifal's geographical setting as Catalonia would be good for the Liceu's finances.
Volpini wanted to borrow pieces of staging from other productions (meaning that
Montserrat would not feature as Monsalvat), but after the Wagneriana's insistence
and the intervention of the Junta del Liceu, he conceded that new scenery could be
produced and that Catalans rather than Italians would paint the sets. He also agreed
that Vinas, already strongly identified with the character of Parsifal, would sing the
title role. According to Torres, this protracted wrangling delayed the start of work
on the scenery until November, when four Catalans were finally contracted.
Interestingly, the non-Catalan Descluzes, the scenery painter from the Theatre de la
Monnaie in Brussels, also came to work on the production, after a recommendation
by the French Wagnerian, Maurice Kufferath. Descluzes spent two months in
Barcelona, painting what was perhaps the most important backdrop, the scenery of
Montserrat. Despite the Wagneriana's pro-Catalan insistence that compatriots
produce the scenery, the convincing identification of Parsifal's location with
Montserrat was more important. This suggests that the need to re-make Wagner in
the Catalan image, while maintaining his esteemed Germanic origination, still
provided at least some members of the Wagneriana with the excitement of being two
races at the same time.
34 See Janes, L'Obra de Richard Wagner, 121-2.

35 Torres's articles are on 5 November 1913, and 2, 13, 27 January 1914.
After these preparative tensions it is not clear whether the production itself was
generally successful: the audience appeared split, basing their judgements on
differing criteria. Torres applied an empirical approach, reporting that although
queues for tickets were outstandingly long, the Liceu was not sold out. He also
noted that in the first act many listened in silence and then applauded, but that many
left at the first interval or during the second act, including members of the
Wagneriana, unable to bear the 'profanation'.36 The Italian critic of the Diario
Mercantil adopted a voyeurist position, reporting that the Liceu rarely looked so
beautiful, filled with so many splendidly and elegantly dressed women.37 The critic
of El Teatre Catald, however, was expecting opera convincingly presented as reality
but instead found his eye drawn to the stylistic differences between the scenery
painters, finally remarking: 'this decoration ... we have to recognise, is superb and
has a great deal of character ... but were senyors Moragas and Alarma thinking of it
in ParsifaR'38 This familiar conflict of Wagner as essence of the Catalan spirit yet
German Other, rather than being resolved or disguised by the production, now
created fundamental expectations of the opera's nationality that could not be met
with unanimous approval: for this critic at least, Parsifal was either German or
Catalan. It could not be somewhere in between. The Otherness that initially enticed
Maragall, Millet, d'Ors and Domenech now dogged Parsifal's reception. Wagnerism
in Catalonia seemed as inherently doomed to failure through the strength of
boundary as Barcelona's attempt to 'move the Pyrenees' and become the most
southern city of the north rather than the most northern city of the south.
A few days after the premiere, on 6 January, Pena held a meeting of the
Wlagneriana in order to clarify its position in relation to the quality of the
performance. Pena denied Torres's account of the scenery wrangle, saying that the
painters had actually been contracted since the beginning of the summer and had
therefore been given sufficient time to execute their designs. It is difficult to mediate
in these conflicting accounts, though Pena, who once looked heavenwards to ask
'De profanatione, liberamus Domine' after another failure in the Wagnerian mission, had
little motivation to speak falsely of the production's quality. However, the seduction
of Barcelona coming first in the post-copyright rush to stage Parsifal may have
affected his judgement. The production had been given, he said:
to dignify the work, to make amends for the crimes that have been committed on it by the
world, and undertake the idea of returning the Grail to the pure regions, evoking the
silhouette of our Montserrat. For that end these people between them organised a staging
36 The scene of the 'Consegration of the Grail' (Consagraci6 del Graal) was widely known
from performances in Barcelona, and it was frequently referred to as the 'profanation of
the Grail' (profanaci6 del Graal) by Wagnerians and non-Wagnerians alike, as a way of
distancing themselves from what they considered to be the 'profanations' of Barcelona
performances.
37 Angelo Bignotti, 'Gran Teatro del Liceo. Parsifal', Diario Mercantil, 3 January 1914.
38 Rafael Moragas and Ricard Alarma were two of the Catalan scenery painters; both worked
on some of the most important stagings of Modernist works. Quoted in Isidre Bravo,
'L'Escenografia Wagneriana a Catalunya', Serra d'Or, 281 (1983), 15-22, here 18.
of Parsifal in the form and ambience that the spirit of Wagner would have wished for, so
offering this most glorious apotheosis.39
Pena, looking out from his lofty operatic vantage-point, revealed the survival of
the Messianic mission long after Modernism had supposedly died out, the memory
of Domenech's polemic lingering in the 'apotheosis'. Mistakenly believing that the
Wagneriana was atoning the world for its sins and that the world would thank them,
Pena offered the dead Wagner this fluid morass of real-life and opera. But
Montserrat-Monsalvat, now just a silhouette deflowered by worldly profanation,
rose through this floating twilight as a bare and ominous symbol of racial purity,
scented with Gener's insidious theorising. Gone were the paths of roses and
the energy in the play between art and life. Simply the grey, abstract shape of the
mountain's profile and a touch of vague nostalgia for the troubadour days in the
'returning of the Grail' remained - almost as if Pena, so unlike the critic of El Teatre
Catala, were beyond art and reality altogether.
Doubtless the spirit of Wagner noticed as little as did Europe, but these few
'moments' in the Barcelona reception of this opera nevertheless show how the
intensity of desire to regenerate a region became so strong, so overbearing, that it
attempted to dissolve all borders, barriers and polarisations over which it had
control; until, finally, the notion of boundary itself became either inescapably real or
just wearily forgotten.
39 Quoted in Janes, L'Obra de Richard Wagner, 131 from an article in the newspaper La
Publicidad, 11 January 1914.

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Between Opera and Reality: The Barcelona "Parsifal"

Author(s): Catharine Macedo

Between opera and reality: the Barcelona

At midnight on 31 December 1913 the low string melody of P

Lucy Beckett, Parsifal, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge, 1981),

1 Wagner, a Modernist rose

Wagnerism in early twentieth-century Barcelona was largely synonymous wit

Joan Maragall, one of the most important cultural-political figures of Barcelona in

troubadour-style canfoners.8 Others were also fascinated by dark, Wagnerian forest

D'Ors wittily consigned Wagner's memory to the fantasy world of Dante an

2 On the slopes of Monsalvat

13 M. J. McCarthy, 'Catalan Modemisme, Messianism and Nationalist Myths', Bulletin of Hispanic

But on the Catalans:

The latent Orientalism of Wagner's south-facing castle ('south-facing' bot

'Monsalvat-Monserrat'. It is not clear when the boundary between the two

3 Miquel Domenech and other fallen knights

20 Published in Teatralia, 3 (1910), 344.

Catholique: 'Parsifal' de Wagner.22 First published in French - Domenech presumably

22 Domenech is almost anonymous biographically. According to an article in Pena-Angles,

4 The Barcelona Parsifal

30 Domenech, 'La Tessis en el Parsifal de Wagner', 479.

34 See Janes, L'Obra de Richard Wagner, 121-2.

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