Meyerbeer's Robert and
Wagner's Parsifal
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 oth Richard and
Cosima Wagner hinted that there were secrets in
Parsifal. Certainly, it is a work with many
levels, dimensions and external references. One of
the most fascinating of these references is to an
opera by another composer who had at one time been
Wagner's mentor and benefactor. It has been suggested
that Wagner had modelled the second act of
Parsifal upon part of an opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer. If so, was it
because Wagner trying to convey some message about
the relationship of his Gesamtkunstwerk to
the operatic tradition? Or does it have more to do
with his relationship to Meyerbeer?
 lthough Meyerbeer had encouraged and
promoted the young Wagner, the younger composer came
to resent his erstwhile patron. It seems that this
resentment festered into virulent anti-Semitism, as
expressed in the essay Das Judentum in der Musik
(Judaism in Music). In Wagner's letters to
Meyerbeer, he addresses his patron in terms of
adulation and self-abasement. Several of them begin
with My deeply revered Lord and Master . In one
of these letters he wrote:
 ... you will readily understand
me when I tell you that I weep tears of the deepest
emotion whenever I think of the man who is
everything to me, everything ...
But my head & my heart are no longer mine to
give away, - they are your property, my master; -
the most that is left to me is my two hands, - do
you wish to make use of them? - I realise that I
must become your slave, body & soul, in order
to find food and strength for my work, which will
one day tell me of my gratitude. I shall be a loyal
& honest slave ... 
[Richard Wagner to Giacomo Meyerbeer, 3 May
1840; tr. Spencer and Millington]
 t is not surprising
that Wagner looked back upon his relationship to
Meyerbeer with
repugnance. Wagner tried to explain himself to
Liszt:
Towards Meyerbeer my position is a
peculiar one. I do not hate him but he disgusts me
beyond measure. This eternally amiable and pleasant
man reminds me of the most turbid, not to say most
vicious, period of my life, when he pretended to be
my protector; that was a period of connections and
back stairs when we are made fools of by our
protectors, whom in our inmost heart we do not
like. This is a relation of the most perfect
dishonesty; neither party is sincere towards the
other; one and the other assume the appearance of
affection and both make use of each other as long
as their mutual interest requires it. For the
intentional impotence of his politeness towards me
I do not find fault with Meyerbeer; on the contrary, I
am glad not to be his debtor as deeply as, for
example, B[erlioz?]. But it was quite time that I
should free myself perfectly from this dishonest
relation towards him. Externally there was not the
least occasion for it, for even the experience that
he was not sincere towards me would not have
surprised me, neither did it give me the right to
be angry, because at bottom I had to own that I had
intentionally deceived myself about him. But from
inner causes arose the necessity to relinquish all
considerations of common prudence with regard to
him. As an artist I cannot exist before myself and
my friends, I cannot think or feel, without
realizing and confessing my absolute antagonism to
Meyerbeer, and to this
I am driven with genuine desperation when I meet
with the erroneous opinion even among my friends
that I have anything in common with with Meyerbeer.
[Richard Wagner to Franz Liszt, 18 April 1851; tr.
Francis Hueffer]
Left: Meyerbeer's Robert le diable.
Lithograph by J. Arnout. ©Bibliothèque de l'Opéra,
Paris.
n view of the above,
it is most surprising to find that there are dramatic
and musical parallels between the third act of
Meyerbeer's Robert le
Diable, a work that Wagner knew intimately from
before his time in Paris (he conducted a performance
of the work in 1838), and the second act of
Parsifal. This has been demonstrated by
Walter Keller. [Tribschener Blätter,
xxx, December 1971, pp.6-12; translated in
Wagner, v13 nr2, May 1992,
pp.83-90.]
Parallels in Dramatic Structure
 he obvious parallels
in the respective action of the two acts suggests
that Wagner was, either consciously or unconsciously,
thinking of Robert le Diable when he wrote
his Prose Draft of 1865.
Wagner had last heard Meyerbeer's opera at the Paris
Opera in 1860. Keller lists the following
parallels.
|
Robert le diable |
Parsifal |
| A
hall in the ruined convent of St. Rosalie, with
cloisters to the right and a cemetery to the
left. Centre stage is a marble statue of St.
Rosalie herself, holding a green cypress branch
in her hands. |
Klingsor's enchanted
castle, in the inner dungeon of a tower that
is open to the sky. The foot of the tower is
shrouded in darkness. |
Scène et évocation
Bertram, the prince of darkness, conjures up the
shades of those formed nuns who were unfaithful
to their vows: Nonnes qui reposez
sous cette froide pierre, relevez-vous! |
Using his magician's powers, Klingsor conjures up
Kundry's soul; her
spirit appears in the shadows. Herauf! herauf! Zu mir! |
Procession des nonnes
Swathed in their funerary shrouds, the nuns rise
slowly from their graves and, roused to a brief
semblance of life, foregather in the hall. |
In
the blue light, Kundry's
figure rises up. She seems asleep. She moves
like on awaking. Finally she utters a terrible
cry. |
Récitatif
Bertram announces Robert's imminent approach and
orders the nuns to seduce him. |
Klingsor announces Parsifal's imminent approach
and orders Kundry to seduce him. |
Bacchanale
The nuns cast off their veils, revealing
seductive dancing costumes underneath. They join
in a lively bacchanale but withdraw on Robert's
entrance. |
Magic Maidens
scene. From all sides rush in the Flower
maidens clad in light veil-like garments, first
singly, then in groups, forming a confused,
many-coloured throng. They seem as though just
startled out of sleep. |
Récitatif
Robert enters through the cloisters. |
Parsifal jumps down into
the garden. |
Premier air de ballet
The nuns attempt to seduce Robert by plying him
with drink.
Deuxième air de ballet
The nuns attempt to seduce Robert through
gambling.
Troisième air de ballet
They try to seduce him through love. |
The maidens deck themselves with flowers. They
dance in a graceful, childlike manner about
Parsifal, caressing him gently. Parsifal is at
first fascinated and then repelled by them:
Lasst ab! Ihr fangt mir
nicht! |
|
Although the abbess Hélène succeeds in persuading
Robert to drink and gamble, he recoils from the
cypress branch. Finally, however, drunk with
love, he steals a kiss from the
abbess, then tears the branch from the statue's
hands and disappears through the cloisters. |
Parsifal attains to knowledge through Kundry's
kiss. He repulses her. |
Choer dansé
Demons rise up out of the ground, seize the nuns
and disappear with them underground. The nuns'
shrouds remain lying on the floor of the
stage. |
Parsifal catches the Spear which has been hurled
at him, whereupon the castle falls as by an
earthquake. The garden withers to a desert; the
ground is scattered with faded flowers. Kundry
sinks down with a cry. Parsifal, hastening away,
pauses on top of the ruined wall, and turns back
to Kundry. Du weisst, wo du mich
wieder finden kannst! He hastens away. |
Parallels in Key Structure
 hat is more
surprising, however, is the discovery that the key
structure of the two Stollen (in Lorenz's analysis)
of the second act of Parsifal, follows the
key structure of the finale to act 3 of
Robert. Keller lists the following
parallels.
|
Robert le diable |
Parsifal |
| Number |
Key |
Period |
Bars |
Action |
Key |
|
Conjuration |
b minor |
1 |
1-131 |
Conjuration |
b minor |
|
|
2 |
132-193 |
Awakening |
e flat
minor |
|
Procession |
c minor |
3 |
194-213 |
First
refusal |
c minor |
|
|
4 |
214-267 |
Klingsor's
boast |
b minor |
|
|
5 |
268-298 |
Conjuration |
b minor |
|
Recitative |
E flat
major |
6 |
299-386 |
Parsifal
storms the castle |
E flat
major |
|
Bacchanale |
d minor |
|
|
|
|
|
Bacchanale |
D major (rel.
major) |
7 |
396-426 |
Klingsor's
delusions |
b minor |
|
|
8 |
427-498 |
Arrival of
maidens |
g minor |
|
Recitative |
E flat major
(rel. major) |
9 |
499-520 |
Noch nie
sah ich |
c minor |
|
|
10 |
521-702 |
Maidens flirt
with Parsifal |
A flat
major |
|
|
11 |
703-735 |
Du Zager
und Kalter |
A flat
major |
| Premier air de
ballet |
G major |
12 |
736-805 |
Departure of
maidens |
G major |
Redemption
f this is a conscious
reworking of Meyerbeer,
is then Wagner's Abgesang, the Tristanesque
scene between Kundry and Parsifal, intended to prove
the superiority of Wagner's art? If we look for them,
references to Wagner's life and his quest for the
Gesamtkunstwerk are not hard to find in
Parsifal: the near quotation of the Swan
motif from Lohengrin in the first act, and
the allusions to Tristan, not least in the
three periods following the kiss. Perhaps the
autobiographical message of Parsifal is that
Wagner had broken free of the spell cast upon him by
his antithesis, his Klingsor: Giacomo Meyerbeer.
Coincidence or intentional?
 ince writing the
above, I have become more sceptical about the
parallels that Keller claimed to have detected
between Robert and Parsifal. It is
quite possible, even likely, that the parallel in
dramatic structure of the corresponding parts of
these two dramas arose by coincidence. It does not
even seem necessary to suppose an unconscious
influence, although that too is a possibility. What
seems more likely, in my view, is that Wagner
realised that his scene with Parsifal and the magic
maidens resembled Meyerbeer's scene with Robert and
the nuns -- and that he chose to emphasise, rather
than conceal, the parallel when he composed the
music.
he tonal parallels
too might be coincidental. The tradition of
associative tonality dictates that b minor is the villain key, which Wagner
therefore associates with Klingsor, while
G major is the mother-child
key, which Kundry employs when she reminds the boy of
his mother. So in my opinion, the question of whether
Parsifal contains real references to
Robert remains open.
|
