Live from the Met: Parsifal
Placido Domingo and John Tomlinson star in Richard Wagner 's final music drama, conducted by the artistic director of the New York Metropolitan Opera,
James Levine. The brotherhood of knights who guard the Holy Grail -the chalice used at the Last Supper- are facing extinction. Their King Amfortas, seduced by a temptress, has lost their other sacred relic -the spearthat pierced Christ's side -to the sorcerer Klingsor. Only a " pure fool, made wise through pity" can bring salvation. Then a passer-by shoots one of the knights' sacred swans. He's a goofy young man called Parsifal but old
Gurnemanz has a hunch about him. During the interval Rodney Milnes continues his series Opera Snaps- a sideways glance at each of this season's Met operas.
New York Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra, conductor James Levine Act
6.45 Interval: Wagner and the Philosophers At key points in his creative career, Wagner fell under the spell first of Nietzsche, then of Schopenhauer. What were the ideas that attracted him? And how did they affect his subsequent music?
7.15 Opera Snaps
7.25 Act 2
8.35 Interval: A Knight of Peace
Ecclesiologist Julian Litten joins Christopher Cook to explore the solid silver Edward VII memorial altar at Sandringham along with some earlierwork by its creators Barkentin and Krall, once one of the world's leading firms of silversmiths.
9.05 Act 3
Wagner's controversial masterpiece - Music: page 46