Carole M. Cusack, Tortured Immortality Redeemed by Love: Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman (1843) and Parsifal (1882) By Carole Cusack

https://www.academia.edu/142984489/Carole_M_Cusack_Tortured_Immortality_Redeemed_by_Love_Wagner_s_The_Flying_Dutchman_1843_and_Parsifal_1882_?email_work_card=title The Flying Dutchman (1843) and Parsifal (1882) are united by characters who are doomed to wander the earth as penance for unexpurgated sin (a blasphemous oath by the Dutchman, and Kundry’s laughter at Christ on the cross). Both are identified with the Wandering Jew of Christian folklore, who mocked the crucified Jesus and was doomed to deathless wandering. Both are saved by Christ figures; Senta sacrifices herself to break the curse that binds the Dutchman, and Parsifal baptises Kundry, who dies a saved Christian, on Good Friday, the commemoration day of Christ’s atonement. The Jewish identity of the Dutchman and Kundry is a serious impediment; that Richard Wagner held antisemitic views is well-known. Yet what is more interesting is that over almost 40 years there is an explicit shift towards more conventional Christian imagery evident in Parsifal. Wagner thought his era was one in which religion had lost power and art was needed to replace it. Wagner is thoroughly modern for he, to quote David Huron, creates a “music of hunger, rather than of fulfilment” (2006). The Flying Dutchman is a symbolic opera; but Parsifal is a Bühnenweihfestspiel (“festival work for the initiation of a stage”) intended to redeem its audience.