Parsifal

Wagner's final opera takes place in a monastery of knights who guard the Holy Grail. Their king, Amfortas, has a wound that will not close — the sacred spear having been used against him — and the ritual he must lead each day brings agonizing pain rather than the grace it is supposed to deliver. Into this arrives Parsifal: young, innocent, knowing nothing about any of this, who has just shot a swan and is brought before the knights without any understanding of where he is. Wagner's libretto concerns spiritual awakening, compassion, and whether innocence can achieve what wisdom and suffering have failed to. The opera runs nearly six hours with intermissions, and its pace is deliberate — Wagner builds toward the Good Friday Music in Act 3, a passage of orchestral radiance that is, for those who arrive at it, among the most transcendent things he ever wrote. Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.