I Listened to 31 Recordings of “Parsifal” in a Month

David Blaine sat in a Perspex box for 44 days. Sir Ranulph Fiennes crossed Antarctica on foot. When one isn’t athletically gifted, one’s endurance stunts must take a different form. So I listened to every recording of “Parsifal” on Spotify.

Though “Parsifal” is Wagner’s slowest and oddest music-drama, I love it dearly, and I wanted more than anything to get inside it and understand what made it tick. I thus decided, in what now seems like a haze of bad decision-making matched only by the time I decided to get an arts degree during a global financial crisis, that the way to get inside “Parsifal” was to listen to it. A lot. By this, of course, I mean a tour of every single recording of the opera available from Spotify, the discerning musician’s financially immoral megacorporation of choice.

Roughly 7,500 minutes of theosophical redemption later, I have… some thoughts. My first: “‘Parsifal’ is the best opera ever written!” My second: “Is there a correct number of times to listen to Parsifal?” I am absolutely certain that 31 recordings in a month is an incorrect number. 

Before we jump in, a quick run-down of names, terms and plot. In Act I, a very stupid boy named Parsifal kills a swan, and an old man yells at him. They then take holy communion. In Act II, the boy goes to a magic castle and almost gets seduced by a witch. He destroys the castle with the power of Christ. In Act III, he fixes everything with a magic spear. Parsifal (tenor) is a youth whose superpower is never understanding what’s happening. Gurnemanz (baritone) is old. Amfortas (baritone) is old and ill and also the king. Titurel is so old he’s not allowed to go outside. Klingsor (bass) was so obsessed with living his best life that he castrated himself (me too, sis #transrights). Kundry (soprano) is the one woman allowed in every Wagner opera; in this iteration she was cursed to live forever because she made fun of Jesus.

I’ve listed 31 “Parsifal”s here: there are a few more than that listed on Spotify. This is because there are multiple identical versions of some of the recordings on the platform. If you know of a “Parsifal” on Spotify that isn’t listed in this article, please don’t let me know.

Also, I know that everyone says Rafael Kubelík’s 1980 recording is the best. It’s not on Spotify! My hands are tied, admittedly by a brief I set myself.