Among all of the great performances of Wagner’s final opera, this performance of Parsifal from the stage of the Met has been for years one of the holy grails for Wagner enthusiasts, for until now, this broadcast had never been issued in its complete form. It represents the only time that Parsifal with the great Wagnerian duo, Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior, was broadcast and preserved. It has none of the customary cuts that afflict other Wagner performances from this era with all cast members in excellent voice. The transfers were made from original discs recorded off the air by a New York recording studio, and we are proud to present this important performance for the first time. The two other principals are Friedrich Schorr and Emanuel List. During this time, the Metropolitan’s Wagner opera performances were conducted by Austrian conductor, Artur Bodanzky. But on this Good Friday, because of ill health, his doctors insisted that he conduct only the first and third acts; Act 2 is ably conducted by his then assistant, Erich Leinsdorf.
| Amfortas | Friedrich Schorr |
| Titurel | Norman Cordon |
| Gurnemanz | Emanuel List |
| Klingsor | Arnold Gabor |
| Parsifal | Lauritz Melchior |
| Kundry | Kirsten Flagstad |
| First Knight of the Grail | George Cehanovsky |
| Second Knight of the Grail | Louis D’Angelo |
| First Esquire | Natalie Bodanya |
| Second Esquire | Helen Olheim |
| Third Esquire | Giordano Paltrinieri |
| Fourth Esquire | Karl Laufkötter |
| Solo Flower Maidens: Group I: | Susanne Fisher, Irra Petina, Helen Olheim |
| Solo Flower Maidens: Group II | Hilda Burke, Thelma Votipka, Doris Doe |
| |
| Artur Bodanzky (Acts I and III), conductor | |
| Erich Leinsdorf (Act II), conductor | |
| Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus, New York City | |
| Konrad Neuger, chorus master | |
| Leopold Sachse, stage director | |
| Joseph Urban, set designer | |
CD 1 (49:14) | ||
ACT I, Part I | ||
| 1. | Milton Cross announces the entrance of Artur Bodanzky | 0:38 |
| 2. | Vorspiel/Prelude | 15:48 |
| 3. | He! Ho! Waldhüter ihr! | 4:52 |
| (Gurnemanz, Second Knight) | ||
| 4. | Seht dort, die wilde Reiterin! | 2:35 |
| (Gurnemanz, Knights, Esquires, Kundry) | ||
| 5. | Recht so! Habt Dank! Ein wenig Rast | 5:54 |
| (Amfortas, Gurnemanz, Knights, Kundry) | ||
| 6. | He! Hu da! | 6:03 |
| (Esquires, Knights, Kundry) | ||
| 7. | Das ist ein And’res | 3:37 |
| (Gurnemanz, Esquires) | ||
| 8. | Titurel, der fromme Held | 9:46 |
| (Gurnemanz, Esquires) | ||
CD 2 (58:00) | ||
ACT I, Part II | ||
| 1. | Weh! Weh! … Wer ist der Frevler? | 5:58 |
| (Knights, Esquires, Gurnemanz, Parsifal) | ||
| 2. | Nun sag’! Nichts weißt du, was ich dich frage | 6:15 |
| (Gurnemanz, Parsifal, Kundry) | ||
| 3. | Vom Bade kehrt der König heim | 2:11 |
| (Gurnemanz, Parsifal) | ||
| 4. | Verwandlungsmusik/Transformation Music | 4:49 |
| 5. | Zum letzten Liebesmahle | 5:55 |
| (Knights, Voices of Youths and Boys) | ||
| 6. | Mein Sohn Amfortas! Bist du am Amt? | 9:44 |
| (Titurel, Amfortas) | ||
| 7. | “Durch Mitleid wißend, der reine Tor” | 9:31 |
| (Boys, Youths, Knights, Titurel, Voices) | ||
| 8. | Wein und Brot des letzten Mahles | 4:20 |
| (Voices of Boys and Youths, Knights) | ||
| 9. | Procession of the Knights | 4:23 |
| 10. | Was stehst du noch da? | 2:11 |
| (Gurnemanz, Alto Voice, Voices of Boys and Youths) | ||
| 11. | Closing announcement, Milton Cross | 2:43 |
CD 3 (67:14) | ||
ACT II | ||
| 1. | Opening announcement, Milton Cross (incomplete) | 3:53 |
| 2. | Vorspiel/Prelude Die Zeit ist da | 5:23 |
| (Klingsor) | ||
| 3. | Ach! – Ach! Tiefe Nacht! | 3:13 |
| (Kundry, Klingsor) | ||
| 4. | Furchtbare Not! | 6:05 |
| (Klingsor, Kundry) | ||
| 5. | Hier war das Tosen! | 3:30 |
| (Flower Maidens, Chorus, Parsifal) | ||
| 6. | Komm! Komm! Holder Knabe! | 4:10 |
| (Flower Maidens, Parsifal, Chorus) | ||
| 7. | Parsifal! Weile! | 6:23 |
| (Kundry, Parsifal, Flower Maidens, Chorus) | ||
| 8. | Ich sah das Kind an seiner Mutter Brust | 4:39 |
| (Kundry) | ||
| 9. | Wehe! Wehe! Was tat ich? Wo war ich? | 4:31 |
| (Parsifal, Kundry) | ||
| 10. | Amfortas! Die Wunde! Die Wunde! | 8:15 |
| (Parsifal, Kundry) | ||
| 11. | Grausamer! Fühlst du im Herzen nur And’rer Schmerzen | 8:13 |
| (Kundry, Parsifal) | ||
| 12. | Erlösung, Frevlerin, biet’ ich auch dir | 5:25 |
| (Parsifal, Kundry, Klingsor) | ||
| 13. | Closing announcement, Milton Cross | 3:34 |
CD 4 (71:52) | ||
ACT III | ||
| 1. | Opening announcement, Milton Cross | 2:49 |
| 2. | Vorspiel/Prelude | 4:14 |
| 3. | Von dorther kam das Stöhnen | 3:57 |
| (Gurnemanz, Kundry) | ||
| 4. | Du tolles Weib! Hast du kein Wort für mich? | 3:25 |
| (Gurnemanz, Kundry) | ||
| 5. | Heil dir, mein Gast! | 5:43 |
| (Gurnemanz) | ||
| 6. | Heil mir, daß ich dich wieder finde! | 3:20 |
| (Parsifal, Gurnemanz) | ||
| 7. | O Gnade! Höchstes Heil! | 5:49 |
| (Gurnemanz, Parsifal) | ||
| 8. | Nicht so! Die heil’ge Quelle selbst erquicke unsres Pilgers Bad | 5:44 |
| (Gurnemanz, Parsifal) | ||
| 9. | So ward es uns verhiessen (Good Friday Spell) | 11:54 |
| (Gurnemanz, Parsifal) | ||
| 10. | Mittag—Die Stund’ ist da (Transformation Music) | 4:43 |
| (Gurnemanz) | ||
| 11. | Geleiten wir im bergenden Schrein den Gral zum heiligen Amte | 3:46 |
| (Knights) | ||
| 12. | Ja, Wehe! Wehe! | 6:54 |
| (Amfortas, Knights) | ||
| 13. | Nur eine Waffe taugt | 3:32 |
| (Parsifal) | ||
| 14. | Höchsten Heiles Wunder! | 4:13 |
| (Parsifal, Knights, Esquires, Chorus) | ||
| 15. | Closing announcement, Milton Cross | 1:49 |
| ||
Producers: Ward Marston, Scott Kessler, and Jeffery S. McMillan
Audio Conservation: Ward Marston and J. Richard Harris
Photos: The Metropolitan Opera Archives
Booklet Coordinator: Mark S. Stehle
Booklet Design: Takeshi Takahashi
Booklet Notes: Jeffery S. McMillan
Producer’s Note: Ward Marston
Marston would like to thank Eugene Pollioni for his gracious loan of his set of unique discs used for this production.
Marston would like to thank former and present directors Peter Clark and Maurice Wheeler of the Metropolitan Opera Archives and curator John Shepard of the Jean Gray Hargrove Music Library at University of California Berkeley for their help in providing photos.
Marston would like to thank Mia Bongiovanni and Grace Row of the Metropolitan Opera for their help with this project.
Marston would like to thank Gregor Benko and Will Crutchfield for their editorial advice.
Major sponsors: Evan and Marie Blackmore, Stephen Racker, and Mark Hopke
Partial sponsors: Alan R. Anbari, Stephen Bauman, Joseph A. Bartush, Robert Coleman, Dace Gisclard, Stephen Morton, Marc Rubenstein, William Russell, and Mauro Sarnelli
Marston is grateful to the Estate of John Stratton (Stephen Clarke, Executor) for its support.
PARSIFAL AT THE METROPOLITAN OPERA
©Jeffery S. McMillan, 2025
Decades before the Metropolitan Opera defied Richard Wagner’s heirs by staging the U.S. premiere of Parsifal on Christmas Eve in 1903, the opera’s tortured and ecstatic religiosity was well-known in America. Wagner’s widow had tried in vain to block the production and retain Parsifal as an exclusive for visitors to the composer’s theater in Bayreuth but her foolhardy, naive attempts at restricting a great work of art were doomed to fail. By 1903, Parsifal’s history at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House was already on equal footing with Bayreuth for longevity and significance.
Immediately after Parsifal’s premiere in Bayreuth on 26 July 1882, rival conductors vied to present the music of Parsifal in New York. The race to be the first resulted in a tie: audiences and critics had to choose between two different concert presentations on the same November 3rd evening: Leopold Damrosch leading the Act I finale at New York’s Academy of Music, or Theodore Thomas conducting the last act in Brooklyn. Parsifal skirmishes continued in February 1883 when the same maestros competed to memorialize Wagner’s death, each featuring concerts with music from the master’s “Bühnenweihfestspiel,” or “stage-consecrating festival play.” Thomas broke new ground by conducting a substantial portion of the second act with members of the New York Chorus Society as Flower Maidens.
Musical news in New York in 1883 was dominated by the construction of the Metropolitan Opera, the world’s largest opera house, at the corner of Broadway and 39th Street. Parsifal would play a significant role there from the beginning. At the conclusion of the Met’s inaugural, all-Italian, 1883–84 season, Thomas leased the new theater for a series of Wagner concerts that featured three of the composer’s chosen interpreters: tenor Hermann Winkelmann, soprano Amalie Materna, and bass Emil Scaria. Each artist had created a leading role in Parsifal two years earlier, and they brought their pedigrees to extended excerpts from all of Wagner’s works, including Parsifal, on the Met stage. The concerts were successful and Wagner became the order of the day for the Met’s next seven seasons. In an ironic twist, Thomas was passed over for leadership of the nascent all-German company, and Damrosch was given the nod; opera in New York was always a blood sport. Thomas eventually left New York for the Midwest, where he founded the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1891.
Throughout the 1880s and the golden 1890s, the Metropolitan Opera presented Wagner’s works with unimpeachable casts that were the envy of every opera manager in the world. The company gave American premieres of most of the Wagner music dramas, but stopped short of staging his final work, heeding the warning of their soprano, Lilli Lehmann, that a staged production of Parsifal would invite open conflict with Bayreuth, and force artists to take sides. For the time being, the Metropolitan continued performing Parsifal in concert form only.
Despite Bayreuth’s vehement protests and threats of legal action, the Met’s General Manager, Heinrich Conried, decided to upset the scales and stage Parsifal in 1903 (Cosima Wagner called his enterprise “the rape of the Grail”). By that time the work had been heard nearly complete on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House for almost two decades. Two artists who participated in the Christmas Eve premiere—tenor Alois Burgstaller and baritone Anton van Rooy—had appeared in Parsifal at Bayreuth and were subsequently banished from Wagner’s Festspielhaus by Cosima as punishment for participating in Conried’s rogue production. After much groveling, Burgstaller was forgiven and reinstated but the conductor of the American performances, Alfred Hertz, stayed away from Bayreuth for decades after narrowly escaping an attack by Wagnerian zealots at the 1904 Festival.
While rival opera companies condemned Conried’s violation of Wagner’s final wish—that Parsifal be presented only in Bayreuth at the Festspielhaus—most European impresarios, bound by copyright restrictions until midnight on 31 December 1913, were bitterly jealous of the Metropolitan and counting the days until they, too, could present Parsifal. During those bone-building years for the opera in America, the Metropolitan Opera consolidated its advantage by taking Parsifal on tour across the country, with stops in cities that have not hosted a second production of the work since the Met came through town in 1905.
Good Friday
The Met initiated traditions to enhance the sense of occasion around its presentations of Parsifal. Trumpets recalling patrons to the theater from a two-hour first intermission, and the prohibition of applause or curtain calls after Acts I and III—the “sacred acts”—were customs cribbed from Bayreuth, but the Metropolitan happened upon a novel Parsifal practice that has become a ritual around the world: performances on Good Friday. Large-scale sacred works like Bach’s St. Matthew Passion or Handel’s Messiah presented on the Friday before Easter were already a part of how many New Yorkers observed the occasion, but opera was generally considered too theatrical for holy days. With Parsifal’s last act actually set on Good Friday, the move to unite sacred holiday and opera was a marketing masterstroke, unobtainable at Bayreuth where performances were limited to the late
summer months.
Conried’s scheduling coup was achieved more by chance than design. The barnstorming of the 1905 Parsifal tour necessitated a performance in Dallas on 21 April, which happened to be Good Friday. The Met booked it, hoping at least some people would buy tickets (they did), but the potential of this innovation escaped immediate notice. The following season Conried granted his company, who were on tour in Kansas City during Good Friday, the holiday as a day of rest. Parsifal was given earlier that season in New York, but not taken on tour (a serendipitous decision, as all of the Met’s touring productions were destroyed in the calamitous earthquake and fire in San Francisco on 18 April 1906). The Good Friday tradition began in earnest at the Metropolitan Opera House on 29 March 1907 with Hertz conducting Alois Burgstaller (Parsifal), Olive Fremstad (Kundry), Anton van Rooy (Amfortas), and Robert Blass (Gurnemanz).
Between 1908 and 1917, Conried’s successor Giulio Gatti-Casazza built on Parsifal’s success by scheduling it every Good Friday, with additional performances during Holy Week and on holidays such as Thanksgiving, New Year’s Day, and even Washington’s Birthday (the Christmas Eve experiment was not repeated). Such traditions were interrupted in 1917 when America entered the Great War, and the Met subsequently dropped German works from its repertory for nearly three years.
Parsifal was the first Wagnerian opera that the Met restored after the War. Previously heard on 6 April 1917 (a Good Friday matinee which was also the day war was declared on Germany), the work returned to the Met’s stage in English on 19 February 1920 in a new production by Viennese designer Joseph Urban. Henry Krehbiel’s translation lasted three seasons, but Urban’s settings served the company for an astonishing 110 performances over thirty-five revivals, including three decades when the work was presented every season. Only once during this period did the Met fail to offer a Good Friday matinee of Parsifal, in 1933, when austerity measures brought on by the Great Depression necessitated a shortened season (the opera was given earlier that season on 13 February, the fiftieth anniversary of Wagner’s death). The unbroken chain of consecutive seasons was finally severed in 1950–51 when the company’s new general manager, Rudolf Bing, omitted Parsifal from his first season, programming instead a Good Friday performance of Verdi’s Requiem. It bears emphasis that box office demand drove the Parsifal tradition, not sentimentality. Had the work failed to appeal to ticket buyers year after year, it would have undoubtedly been dropped without apology.
Artur Bodanzky and
the Met’s Peerless Wagnerians
When Gatti-Casazza assumed leadership of the Met in 1908, he inherited a conducting staff for the German repertory headed by Alfred Hertz and Gustav Mahler, to which he added Arturo Toscanini. In 1909, Mahler left for the New York Philharmonic, until failing health cut short his engagement and his life in 1911. Hertz remained the Met’s go-to artist for the German works that Toscanini chose not to conduct, including Parsifal, but after a quarrel with Gatti during preparations for the Met’s 1913 premiere of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier Hertz began planning his exit strategy, including a move west and eventually assuming the directorship of the San Francisco Symphony. The Met hoped all of Mahler’s and Hertz’s responsibilities would be absorbed by Toscanini, but the fiery Italian abruptly left the company in 1915. (Some biographers assume that he wanted to escape pursuit by Met prima donna Geraldine Farrar.)
After numerous failed entreaties to Toscanini, the company resolved its maestro quandary in 1915 by hiring the young Artur Bodanzky on the strength of his budding career in Mannheim. Through the war years, the Viennese conductor known for his Wagner performances was deputized as a grand opera specialist, leading Enrico Caruso and other Met stars in Le Prophéte and La Juive along with softer German repertory like von Flotow’s Martha, sung in Italian, of course.
When Wagner was reinstated with the 1920 Parsifal production, Bodanzky was already a fixture and the restoration of Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Tristan, Meistersinger, and the Ring also fell upon his shoulders, along with Der Rosenkavalier and novelties such as Janácˇek’s Jenufa. During Bodanzky’s twenty-four seasons, he led 1,095 Met performances, a record that stood until 1988 when James Levine overtook it, en route to setting a new bar in excess of 2,500 performances.
Over the decades, the Met’s annual Parsifal performances avoided stagnation through fine casts drawn from a superior roster of Wagnerians. After making his
Met debut in 1926, Danish heldentenor Lauritz Melchior quickly became the company’s most frequently featured Parsifal. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, several Kundrys made their marks, including Nanny Larsén-Todsen, Gertrude Kappel, Elisabeth Ohms, and Frida Leider. German bass-baritone Friedrich Schorr succeeded American stalwart Clarence Whitehill as Amfortas, while basses Michael Bohnen, Ludwig Hofmann, and Emanuel List all held the spotlight as the old Grail knight, Gurnemanz.
The Wagner singers at the Metropolitan during the 1930s are deservedly legendary, but the staging of the music-dramas during the same period was remarkably primitive and, by contemporary standards, barely adequate. While Joseph Urban’s 1920 Parsifal presented a less rigorously naturalistic alternative to Conried’s 1903 production (a recreation of the Bayreuth staging), the stylized art-deco settings lost effectiveness over the decades. The stage pictures, through lack of rehearsal, devolved into loosely regulated traffic patterns, with principal artists managing much of their own stage business. The transformation scenes in Acts I and III between forest and Temple of the Grail, so elaborate in the 1903 production (and, consequently, prone to malfunction), were accomplished in Urban’s staging by lowering a painted drop curtain showing a grail knight holding a spear and kneeling before a vision of a female form. Wagner’s spectacular music, illustrating the journeys taken by Gurnemanz and Parsifal, offered a challenge that Urban handled efficiently and inexpensively but without much imagination.
By the mid-1930s, the Met’s Parsifal tradition, not unlike the opera’s decrepit order of grail knights, was in need of rejuvenation, while apprehension hung over the company like a pall. During the summer of 1934, the esteemed soprano Frida Leider severed her contract with the Met, leaving a void for the coming season. The aging Gertrude Kappel was beyond her prime and the hiring of Vienna’s prima donna Anny Konetzni for a short engagement was not a long-term solution; a new dramatic soprano was needed if the Met was to maintain its primacy in the German repertory.
Yet the institution faced more serious threats than artist and repertory matters. The crippling effects of the Great Depression forced cuts to artist salaries, while weeks were trimmed from the season. These measures bought time, but the directors knew tightening the belt was no substitute for increased income and new audiences. The encroachment of technology, namely radio and cinema, posed another threat to the bottom line. In Wagnerian fashion, change and a new era of prosperity were ushered in by the arrival of a mysterious stranger.
Parsifal Renewed
Unheralded and all but unknown in New York, thirty-nine-year-old Kirsten Flagstad, a veteran of Oslo’s Royal Opera, made her United States debut as Sieglinde in Die Walküre on 2 February 1935. The performance was broadcast by the National Broadcasting Company and this newcomer’s gloriously ample voice was heard live across the nation. Flagstad’s subsequent appearances as Isolde, Brünnhilde, Elisabeth, Elsa, and Kundry galvanized audiences and the Met’s box office. She had not sung in Parsifal before, but Flagstad’s first Kundry on 17 April 1935, which she had learned in eleven days, evoked memories of the house’s greatest interpreters of the role, among them Milka Ternina and Olive Fremstad. For critics like the New York Times’s Olin Downes, Flagstad’s portrayal was peerless: “… no Kundry has approached in significance and glory of song the interpretation of last night ....”
With Flagstad’s rapid rise, Wagner’s music dramas became popular and even fashionable at the Met, especially Tristan und Isolde. The annual presentations of Parsifal also benefited from the excitement as audiences rushed to hear Flagstad, Melchior, and the vaunted German ensemble. Extra Parsifal performances were added and the Good Friday tradition, cherished by habitual Met patrons for decades, took on greater significance with the famous Norwegian soprano and tireless Danish heldentenor on stage together.
A developing relationship with radio also contributed to the dramatic turn in the opera company’s fortunes. Since agreeing to an arrangement with NBC in 1932, Gatti-Casazza had been ambivalent about broadcasting opera. He permitted partial performances to be broadcast, but wondered if those who listened at home might never step inside the opera house again. Radio assumed far greater importance for Gatti’s eventual successor, Edward Johnson, who persuaded NBC. to broadcast twenty-four complete, live performances, sometimes twice per week, during the opera season.
Between 1935 and 1941, Tristan, the Ring, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, and, of course, Parsifal, were among the Met’s hottest tickets and were programmed regularly. Bodanzky, with his galaxy of Wagnerians and two super singers (to paraphrase New York Times critic Harold C. Schonberg), rose to the exhausting challenge. They opened the Met’s 1936–37 Season with Die Walküre. Then the Flagstad/Melchior duo were again the draw to open the 1937–38 Season in Tristan und Isolde, when the Met also scheduled a Strauss festival, with Bodanzky adding Rosenkavalier and Elektra to his already overburdened plate. “How he accomplishes what he does remains a mystery to his friends and family …” observed the Herald Tribune’s Lawrence Gilman.
Bodanzky’s stamina was considerable, but not limitless. Since the early 1930s, he had suffered ill health and lower back pain brought on by sciatica. Assistant conductor Karl Riedel was often called upon to fill in whenever Bodanzky was ailing, or too tired to finish a long Wagnerian opera. With the music dramas assuming an ever-greater role in the Met’s repertory since Flagstad’s arrival, Viennese conductor Erich Leinsdorf was hired for the 1937–38 season. A former assistant to both Toscanini and Bruno Walter in Salzburg, the ambitious twenty-five-year-old Leinsdorf coveted a significant role on the Met roster from the beginning. Viewing fellow assistants Riedel and Hermann Weigert as mere support staff for Bodanzky, Leinsdorf was determined to prove his value on the podium and soon found an opportunity when he was called to conduct Die Walküre on 21 January 1938.
Leinsdorf impressed critics with his potent combination of youth, musicianship, and memory (he did not use a score): “a born conductor” observed Gilman. The upstart musician’s view of Bodanzky rarely rose above collegial respect: “witty, urbane, fed up with work, and only excited by his card games ….” In his memoir, Cadenza, Leinsdorf painted an unflattering portrait of Bodanzky, describing him as bored but forced to work through financial necessity: “…like many high-living Americans, [he] had been badly burned in the crash ....” Leinsdorf’s assessment of Bodanzky’s musicianship was equally harsh: “The only major post he had held prior to the Met was Mannheim. For me it was then quite puzzling to find a conductor who appeared basically a capable routineer yet had a worldwide reputation and a powerful position in New York ....” Fortunately, many of Bodanzky’s Met broadcasts have been preserved—posterity’s assessment of his musical talents need not rely on the remembrances of an ambitious conductor who wished to replace him.
April 15th, 1938:
Good Friday
Eager to capitalize on their golden duo after the 1938 spring tour, the Met retained its German ensemble for three post-season performances at the Metropolitan Opera House for Holy Week: Parsifal on 13 April, a Good Friday matinee of Parsifal on the 15th, and a Tristan und Isolde matinee on the 16th with Bodanzky scheduled to lead all three exacting assignments within the span of seventy-two hours. Fatigued by the exertions of a long season, Bodanzky planned to withdraw from the first Parsifal on the recommendation of his doctor. Leinsdorf learned of this from a friend and hastily studied the score in private, writing later: “For some reason the management did not know or did not wish to decide earlier than absolutely necessary whether to replace Bodanzky and waited until eleven on Wednesday morning to ask me to conduct ....”
New York’s musical press corps was invited to attend, also at the last moment, and a sizable assemblage responded. Oscar Thompson commented in the Sun:
“Though he had never attempted a Parsifal performance before, Mr. Leinsdorf apparently knew the orchestral score thoroughly. His head was never in the book. Instead, he gave big cues and shaped the phrasing of separate groups of instruments like one who had the book in his head. He turned the pages but they did not tie him down ….”
Gilman noted that the interlude between the Good Friday scene and the Temple scene sounded “as Wagner intended it to sound: like a processional lament and not like a military march ....” Comparing the Met’s official timings of the Leinsdorf-led performance of 13 April with Bodanzky’s from earlier in the season, the younger conductor’s pacing was significantly slower, especially in Acts I and III where the cumulative difference was eight minutes.
Bodanzky returned to lead the Good Friday Parsifal, but with Tristan scheduled for the next day Leinsdorf was again called upon to assist. Following Act I of Parsifal, Bodanzky required time to rest and Leinsdorf, on hand and ready, stepped in to lead the second act. Bodanzky returned to lead Act III. No announcement of the substitution was made from the stage, and Irving Kolodin commented the next day: “… no more than a handful of the listeners realized that a change had been made ….” While patrons in the opera house may not have noticed, radio listeners were briefed in real time by Met announcer Milton Cross, who identified the work of each maestro.
Both the Good Friday Parsifal and the Tristan on the following day were broadcast. The Tristan is a towering performance of the work, Flagstad and Melchior exhilarating in the roles in which they helped save the Metropolitan Opera from financial ruin. While Tristan had been a regular broadcast feature since the Met’s first season on the air, Wagner’s grail opera, though performed every season, was rarely heard by the radio audience. The 15 April 1938 Good Friday performance was the Met’s first broadcast of the work in its entirety. Moreover, the performance was the company’s only complete Parsifal broadcast until 11 April 1952. Clearly, management felt the opera was a pilgrimage piece that drew audiences to the theater, rather than to their radio sets.
The 1938 Metropolitan Opera broadcast is one of the earliest complete Parsifal performances to survive on recordings. It is predated only by a complete 1936 Teatro Colón performance (available on Marston) and fragmentary broadcast segments from the Met and Bayreuth, the latter conducted by Karl Muck.
Flagstad and Melchior appeared together in all twenty-two Parsifal performances given by the Met during the soprano’s seven pre-World War II seasons. The famous pair recorded a portion of the Act II scene for RCA, but neither singer made a complete studio recording of the opera, nor were captured in another complete broadcast. This performance of 15 April 1938, broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera House, is the only full representation of the two great artists in these roles.
The Performance
With sixty-one total performances of the opera to his credit at the Metropolitan, Bodanzky’s vision for the work was firmly in place by Good Friday of 1938. Whereas he had advocated cuts in most of Wagner’s scores, Bodanzky presented Parsifal without deletions. His reputation for fast tempi is at once confirmed by the relatively fleet pace of the Prelude, which avoids the stately and deep moodiness of Karl Muck and later conductors like Hans Knappertsbusch. Of the 15 April performance, Miles Kastendieck of the Brooklyn Eagle observed: “… the performance moved along under the decisive beat of Bodanzky at a pace not to be questioned ….”
Emanuel List found Bodanzky’s tempo agreeable and declaimed Gurnemanz’s lengthy expositions in Act I with natural ease. His parlando phrasing makes for engaging storytelling, but his voice here lacks the rich luster collectors have come to expect from List. Even if his tone had not warmed sufficiently that afternoon, his fiery punctuations when describing Klingsor reveal List’s experience with the role.
At her Act I entrance, Flagstad’s Kundry sounds neither physically exhausted nor psychologically fractured. Presenting the balsam for Amfortas’s unhealed wound, she simply sings her part, holding her magnificent instrument in check. Her appearance was equally unassuming, wearing a jet-black wig and a distressed tunic of torn rags. (Critic Pitts Sanborn compared her outfit in Act I to a Coney Island fortune teller.) After the extravagant press coverage of Flagstad’s artistry and celebrity, some Met newcomers might have wondered for a moment what all the fuss was about.
The one member of the cast who roars out of the gate vocally is Melchior. After felling the swan and enduring the scolding of Gurnemanz, Melchior’s voice exhibits a virile, silvery sheen that remains electrifying from his first entrance to the conclusion of the opera. “Das weiss ich nicht,” he repeatedly responds to Gurnemanz’s questioning in their first exchange, the young fool’s head not hung low in shame but rather facing the old knight directly with mounting impatience. His character’s smoldering frustration is further antagonized by Kundry’s taunts about his dead mother. Bodanzky’s tempo drives the orchestra and both singers in a tense exchange that sets high expectations for the Act II confrontation to come.
During the Temple of the Grail scene, Bodanzky and the orchestra add occult mystery and a fearsome quality to the stage pageantry. After hearing List’s orations in the forest, Norman Cordon’s Titurel comes as a shock. He sings, “Mein Sohn Amfortas, bist du am Amt?” with an expansive bass sound, rich in color and intimidating authority. As Titurel and the ravenous knights compel Amfortas to uncover the grail, the scene is momentarily thwarted by an errant blip from one of the trumpets (one can imagine Bodanzky firing a furious glare at the culprit!), yet the spell is not broken.
Friedrich Schorr portrays the suffering of Amfortas with nobility of voice, rather than the realism of his character’s debilitating, chronic pain. The grail community has lost compassion for their king and Schorr’s performance underscores the poignance of Amfortas’s occluded dignity; he is injured less by the wound than his shame and isolation. While we listen to Schorr’s deeply affecting performance and imagine his eyes fixated with dread on the holy cup, with the rest of the stage bathed in near darkness, it is entirely possible that our Parsifal, although fated to be moved by this episode, is not even physically present! Melchior was often bored when standing silently in the dark during this scene, and was known to slip quietly into the wings for a beer, or to trade jokes with the stagehands.
In the Act I conclusion, the words of the prayer, “Selig im Glauben,” are intoned louder than a pianissimo by the Met’s sopranos. So are the final chords, and the end of the scene comes rather suddenly. In hindsight, this relatively clumsy closing may be evidence of Bodanzky’s fatigue and inability to continue the performance without a rest. More startling is the silence that follows; the effect is quite eerie as the Met audience stifles the compulsion to applaud.
Leinsdorf’s tempi in the sacred acts were reportedly on the slow, unfolding side of the spectrum two days earlier, but he launches into Act II in this performance with a fiery pulse. Still slower by three minutes than Bodanzky’s Act II from 18 March, Leinsdorf never lets the energy sag. At the top of the scene, Arnold Gabor’s Klingsor immediately communicates why he was so valuable to the company during his long tenure. A shapeshifter on stage in a vast repertory of roles, Gabor animates the failed aspirant to the grail order with fierce declamation and a great deal of menace that surely reached every seat in the theater as easily as it reached the radio microphones.
Flagstad’s reading further enlivens the second act with the awesome power of her voice and her musicality. “Ich sah das kind,” Kundry’s narration about the pitiful death of Parsifal’s parents, finds Flagstad caressing each phrase and spinning her melancholic web of seduction with unfaltering beauty of expression. Her tone never strains as she chastises Parsifal for not succumbing, negotiating each intervallic leap with unfailing security. When Kundry recalls laughing at the suffering of Jesus, a moment sopranos (and pushed-up mezzos) often handle with either a wild shriek on the word “lachte” or a dizzying glissando from the high B-natural, Flagstad nails each note with pinpoint accuracy. The defiant gesture is just one example of Flagstad’s unique ability to reveal Wagner’s genius through rigorous musicianship.
Meeting Flagstad on this exalted level, Melchior’s slightly pinched tenor is tireless and wholly at his disposal as the foolish Parsifal is awakened to feelings of compassion by Kundry’s kiss. How exciting it is to hear these two powerhouse voices locked in conflict. By 1938, the duo, each possessing a glorious voice but completely opposite natures, had not spoken a word to one another off the stage in over a year. While on tour in 1937, careless comments during a card game exploded into a bitter feud. The Met managed to keep the animosity between Flagstad and Melchior quiet throughout their joint reign as the greatest singers in the business, and somehow the off-stage tension did not adversely affect the magic they repeatedly summoned in the theater. Ironically, it was the death of Bodanzky in 1939 that brought about peace between them and united the singers to a joint cause: they both opposed Leinsdorf’s promotion. Though they had all worked together many times since Leinsdorf’s arrival, the two singers publicly expressed a vote of no confidence in the young conductor, claiming he was not ready. Those doubts seem exaggerated now, listening to their collaboration on 15 April 1938.
Gilman praised Flagstad’s performance in the first two acts as “transcendent” and “genuine triumphs of the dramatic imagination.” We must take his word for it that her Kundry of the final act was “… greatest of all … among the masterpieces of the modern stage …” as hers is essentially a mime part. Yet even without the Flagstad sound, Act III features extraordinary singing by List, Melchior, and Schorr. With the return of Bodanzky to the podium to lead the last act, we are also granted the opportunity to hear one of the conductor’s most lauded achievements with the orchestra, the “Karfreitagzauber” or “Good Friday spell.” Leinsdorf champion Lawrence Gilman gave Bodanzky his due: “Yesterday he brought to us the essentials of this music, became the implement and deputy of its exalting greatness ….”
List’s voice is sufficiently warm by the beginning of the final act and his narration about the renewal of Good Friday is heartfelt and deeply moving. As in Act I, Schorr is forthright in Amfortas’s great monologue in the final scene, portraying the king with sensitivity rather than over-the-top histrionics. Above all it is Melchior who commands our attention, entering the scene wielding his wondrous, gleaming tenor calmly and with restraint, before rising to his calling as the grail community’s new leader with thrilling intensity.
The following day, Sun critic and Metropolitan Opera chronicler Irving Kolodin reported that the Good Friday matinee of Parsifal was “… a performance of deep musical and spiritual beauty ….” Eighty years later, this commanding performance of Wagner’s final opera continues to enchant as both a great representation of the work and an example of a past era of vocal splendor.
SYNOPSIS
ACT I
On the bank of a woodland lake outside the Castle of Monsalvat, the oldest of the Knights of the Holy Grail, Gurnemanz, wakes at dawn to perform morning prayers. Two knights arrive from the castle where they are preparing the morning bath for King Amfortas. They report on the state of the king who suffers from an incurable wound received while fighting the sorcerer Klingsor. Kundry, a mysterious, ageless woman who now serves as the Grail’s messenger, suddenly appears carrying a balsam for Amfortas. The king accepts the balsam but it fails to heal his wound.
Gurnemanz recounts to the esquires the story of the Holy Grail and plight of the king. Angels brought the Grail and the Holy Spear (the spear which pierced the side of Christ) to Titurel, father of Amfortas, to be guarded only by an order of knights who were pure of heart. Seeking to join the knights, Klingsor tried to overcome his lustful thoughts through self-castration but was rejected by the brotherhood. He found himself in possession of magical powers with which he used his vengeance to transform the wilderness into a luxuriant garden with beautiful women to entrap the knights. Amfortas challenged Klingsor in this magic garden, only to be entrapped by Kundry. While in her arms, Amfortas lost the Holy Spear to Klingsor, who stabbed Amfortas with the weapon, inflicting a wound which prophecy has declared can only be healed by an “innocent fool, enlightened by passion.”
As Gurnemanz finishes his story, a swan suddenly falls to the ground, killed by an arrow. A boastful youth (Parsifal) carrying a bow is dragged in by the knights. Gurnemanz chastises him for killing an animal in the domain of the Grail where all animals are considered sacred. The youth cannot explain himself, and does not know his own name or even where he came from. Kundry knows the boy’s history, recounting how he was raised by his mother, Herzeleide (“Heart’s sorrow”) to avoid his his father’s fate of dying in battle. Parsifal lunges at Kundry when she reveals that his mother has since died, but Gurnemanz restrains him and Kundry disappears into the woods to sleep. Gurnemanz is filled with hope that Parsifal may be the fool described by the prophecy, and invites the youth to the castle for the banquet of the Grail (Liebesmahl).
In the Hall of the Grail, Amfortas and his knights prepare to celebrate the Last Supper. Titurel’s voice urges Amfortas to uncover the Grail so its powers can renew and sustain him, but Amfortas hesitates as doing so will increase his suffering from the wound. Reluctantly he reveals the chalice which glows blood-red and the ritual, similar to Holy Communion, commences. Parsifal watches in silence and shows no pity for the king’s suffering. Gurnemanz, disappointed and angry with the youth’s ignorance, dismisses Parsifal from the castle.
ACT II
In his bewitched stronghold, Klingsor summons Kundry who has fallen back under his spell. Recognizing Parsifal, who approaches the tower, as the salvation of the Knights of the Grail, Klingsor orders Kundry to seduce the youth like she once seduced Amfortas. For her part, Kundry longs for salvation but cannot overcome Klingsor’s magic.
In the magic garden, the Flower Maidens attempt to ensnare Parsifal who has now found himself in Klingsor’s domain. He resists their charms and advances until Kundry appears and they are driven off. She reveals to Parsifal his true identity when she calls him by his given name. She further earns his trust by describing tender details of his childhood and mother. Kundry then recounts to Parsifal the death of his mother, which she suggests can be blamed on his foolishness, but offers consolation through a passionate kiss.
Wrapped in Kundry’s embrace, Parsifal suddenly recognizes the cause of the suffering that has befallen Amfortas. Parsifal rejects Kundry’s seduction, and she curses him to a life of wandering like her own. Klingsor rushes onto the scene and hurls the Holy Spear towards Parsifal, which he catches miraculously. He forms a cross with the spear, causing Klingsor’s magic garden to wither, and breaking his hold on Kundry.
ACT III
Stepping out of his home in the woods, Gurnemanz discovers Kundry lying almost lifeless in a thicket nearby and revives her. A stranger in armor appears and Gurnemanz recognizes him as Parsifal and that he carries the Holy Spear. Parsifal describes his years of wandering following the curse delivered by Kundry, and his efforts to find his way back to Amfortas and the Grail. Gurnemanz describes the sad plight of the realm as Titurel has died, and Amfortas, plagued by his continued suffering, has kept the Grail hidden away all these years. Gurnemanz relieves Parsifal of his armor while Kundry washes his feet with water from a nearby stream, drying them with her hair. Gurnemanz blesses him and pronounces Parsifal the new king of the Grail. In his first act as king, Parsifal baptizes Kundry, freeing her from her centuries-old curse. Parsifal rejoices in the beauty of the surrounding meadow, which Gurnemanz attributes to the magic of Good Friday. Bells in the distance signal Titurel’s funeral and Parsifal, Gurnemanz, and Kundry set off for the castle.
In the great hall, the knights carry in the Grail and Titurel’s coffin. Still consumed by the anguish of his wound, Amfortas refuses to unveil the Grail and urges the knights to end his suffering by slaying him. Parsifal enters and heals Amfortas’s wound by touching it with the point of the Holy Spear. Parsifal unveils and raises the Grail, now reunited with the Spear, as the knights celebrate their new king and ruler of the rejuvenated domain. Absolved of her sins, Kundry falls lifeless to the ground.
THE ARTISTS
Artur Bodanzky (Conductor, Acts I and III). The conductor’s tenure in New York was long-lasting and encompassed an extensive repertory. Trained in Vienna, Bodanzky worked under Gustav Mahler at the Hofoper between 1902 and 1905. He conducted in German theaters and had an appointment in Mannheim until the Metropolitan Opera brought him to America. He made his Met debut during the opening week of the company’s 1915–16 season leading Götterdämmerung with a cast headed by soprano Melanie Kurt and tenor Jacques Urlus. Between 1915 and his death in 1939 at age sixty-one, Bodanzky led 1,095 Met performances and provided artistic leadership through World War I and the Great Depression. He maintained a consistently high level of artistry while establishing one of the greatest German opera ensembles of the twentieth century.
Erich Leinsdorf (Conductor, Act II). In 1937 twenty-five-year-old Viennese conductor Erich Leinsdorf joined the Metropolitan on the recommendation of Arturo Toscanini, with whom he apprenticed at the Salzburg Festival from 1934 until 1937. Over his twenty-two Met seasons, Leinsdorf conducted 483 performances beginning with his 21 January 1938 debut leading Die Walküre with Kirsten Flagstad in the title role, and concluding with Strauss’s Arabella starring Kiri Te Kanawa in 1983. Between stints with the Met, Leinsdorf served as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra, Rochester Philharmonic, and Boston Symphony, and made many recordings of symphonic and operatic repertoire. He died in 1993 in Switzerland.
Lauritz Melchior (Parsifal). Born in 1890, the Danish heldentenor began his career as a baritone in 1913. Melchior retrained his voice with tenor Vilhelm Herold and made his debut as a tenor in 1918 in the title role of Tannhäuser. At the insistence of writer Hugh Walpole, he devoted himself to the study of Wagner’s works and began his international career in 1924 with performances at London’s Royal Opera and in Bayreuth. He made his debut at the Metropolitan as Tannhäuser on 17 February 1926 and, over several seasons, emerged as the company’s leading tenor for German repertory. His reliability and endurance in Wagnerian music-dramas were unprecedented: between 1926 and 1950 he accumulated performance counts at the Met that are unlikely to be equaled or surpassed: Tristan (128), Siegmund (83), Tannhäuser (70), Lohengrin (68), Götterdämmerung Siegfried (51), Siegfried title role (47), and Parsifal (49)—each one a company record. In addition to his twenty-four seasons with the Met, Melchior appeared frequently with London’s Royal Opera and San Francisco Opera. Beginning in 1946, he began appearing in films, sharing screen time with MGM starlet Esther Williams among others. Melchior’s contract was not renewed by the Met’s new general manager in 1950, but he continued to sing in concerts and on the radio until his death in 1973. His extensive discography includes many important recordings, especially Wagner scenes with Frida Leider, Lotte Lehmann, and Kirsten Flagstad.
Kirsten Flagstad (Kundry). A native of Hamar, Norway, Flagstad was born in 1895 to a musical family. Her mother was a vocal coach and pianist who played for early Norwegian recordings from the acoustic era. Flagstad made her stage debut at Oslo’s National Theater as Nuri in d’Albert’s Tiefland in 1913 and performed an extensive repertory of roles in operetta and opera. In 1929 she sang her first Wagnerian role, Elsa, in Norwegian, and a few years later drew attention for her Isolde, performed in German. She sang Gutrune and Ortlinde at the 1933 Bayreuth Festival and added Sieglinde to her Festpielhaus credits during the 1934 Festival. Her Metropolitan Opera debut as Sieglinde on 2 February 1935 was broadcast nationally and created a sensation. During her first season in New York, Flagstad made role debuts as Brünnhilde (Walküre and Götterdämmerung) and Kundry, while also singing Isolde, Elsa, and Elisabeth, the latter two for the first time in German. Flagstad’s repertory at the Met also included Leonore in Fidelio and the title role in Gluck’s Alceste. Her seventy-three performances as Isolde are the most in company history and her twenty-two Kundrys second only to Olive Fremstad. In 1941, Flagstad returned to occupied Norway to be with her husband and faced difficulty returning to American musical life after the War due to unfounded allegations of collaboration with the Nazis. Eventually she returned to San Francisco Opera, the Metropolitan, and sang at Milan’s La Scala. She participated in many essential recordings, including EMI’s Tristan und Isolde under Wilhelm Furtwängler’s direction, as well as the recorded world premiere of Strauss’s Four Last Songs which she performed at the composer’s request, and the Solti Ring on Decca/London Records. After her retirement from the stage, Flagstad served as director of the Norwegian National Opera from 1958–60 and died in 1962.
Friedrich Schorr (Amfortas). Born into a musical family in 1888, with a father who was a well-known cantor, Hungarian baritone Friedrich Schorr pursued a career in law before his talent drew him to a musical path. He took singing lessons in Vienna with Adolf Robinson, leading baritone of the Metropolitan Opera’s German seasons, and made his professional debut in America at the Chicago Opera in 1912. He sang his first Wotan in Die Walküre in Graz at the age of twenty-three, and also appeared in Prague and Cologne before joining the Berlin State Opera in 1923. That same year, he returned to the United States with a touring German opera company where he was heard by the Met’s Giulio Gatti-Casazza. Schorr made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Wolfram in Tannhäuser on 14 February 1924. With the rise of the Nazi regime, the baritone, unable to return to Germany, became the Met’s leading baritone for German repertory for two decades. An ideal interpreter of roles such as Wotan, Amfortas, and Hans Sachs, Schorr sang 455 performances of eighteen roles at the Metropolitan. His discography includes many historic recordings and broadcasts which exhibit the breath control, legato, and expressive range that distinguished him as one of the great singers of the century. He died in 1953.
Emanuel List (Gurnemanz). The Viennese bass was born in 1888 and began his musical career as a member of the Vienna Boys Choir. List moved to the United States with his family and appeared in vaudeville at a young age. With his return to Europe in 1920, he continued his musical training and at the age of thirty-four made his operatic debut as Méphistophélès in Faust at the Vienna Volksoper. He also performed regularly in Berlin, singing with the Charlottenburg Opera and Berlin State Opera during the Weimar period, and at the Salzburg Festival. When the Nazis rose to power in 1933, List returned to the United States to escape persecution and quickly found a home with the Metropolitan Opera. The bass’s sixteen seasons and 448 performances with the Met included many celebrated portrayals which he performed frequently, namely Baron Ochs (75), Hunding (70), King Marke (52), Pogner (37), Gurnemanz (26), and Hagen (24). List also appeared with San Francisco Opera, Chicago Opera, and at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. Following his final Met season in 1949–50, List returned to Europe where he sang in rebuilt Berlin and retired from singing in 1952. He died in Vienna in 1967.
Norman Cordon (Titurel). Born in Washington, D.C. in 1904, Cordon attended the Nashville Conservatory and furthered his studies in Chicago. He made his stage debut with the touring San Carlo Opera in 1933 as the King in Aida. Three years later, the American bass sang Monterone with the Metropolitan Opera beginning an eleven-season association with the company that would include 550 performances of fifty-seven roles. Between 1936 and 1946, Cordon’s most numerous portrayals at the Metropolitan were the King in Aida and Colline, but he occasionally sang leading roles in the company’s Wagnerian presentations, including King Marke, Hunding, the Wanderer, and Heinrich. He performed Titurel on eleven occasions to the Amfortas of either Friedrich Schorr or Herbert Janssen. A stalwart of the American opera scene during the Second World War, Cordon sang four seasons with San Francisco Opera and appeared with the Chicago Opera. He died in 1964.
Arnold Gabor (Klingsor). Born in 1880, Gabor began singing in German houses in the first decade of the twentieth century before joining the German Opera in Budapest. He sang Amfortas in the city’s first performance of Parsifal in 1914 after Bayreuth’s exclusive claim on European performances of the work expired. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut as the Night Watchman in Die Meistersinger on 9 November 1923. Gabor sang 803 performances of sixty roles with the Met over eighteen seasons. A versatile artist, the baritone’s repertory spanned Italian and French works as well as serving as a reliable performer in the company’s vaunted German wing. His 111 Met performances as Melot in Tristan und Isolde are the most in company history. Gabor also performed four seasons with San Francisco Opera, counting among his portrayals Melot, Alberich in Götterdämmerung, and an acclaimed Beckmesser to the Sachs of Friedrich Schorr. He died in 1950.
©Jeffery S. McMillan, 2025
This performance of Parsifal, given by the Metropolitan Opera on April 15th 1938, has never been available in its entirety. It has been among the most sought-after of the Met broadcasts, for it was the only Parsifal ever transmitted with Melchior and Flagstad together. A poor-sounding and incomplete recording of the performance has circulated, which whetted appetites for a better sounding, complete version, now at last available. Other Met broadcasts from this period have circulated for years, ranging in sonic quality from nearly high-fidelity down to almost unlistenable. The best-sounding of these emanate from discs recorded by the National Broadcasting Company at its headquarters in Radio City. Sadly, this unique Parsifal performance was not captured in such a high-quality transcription.
The source for this restoration is a set of 16-inch aluminum-based lacquer-coated discs made by the New York recording studio Broadcast Producers, one of several companies that provided custom-made off-the-air transcription discs for clients willing to pay a hefty fee. The recording was taken from the signal broadcast by NBC’s flagship station, WJZ AM in New York City. The discs were made at 33.3 rpm using two turntables, allowing the music to be recorded without interruption. Though the discs are in remarkably good condition, the recording suffers from three major flaws: limited high-frequencies, intrusive bursts of radio static noise, and sonic distortion toward the end of each side. There is also a short section beginning at about six minutes into CD 2 where there is interference from someone sending Morse Code.
During the mid-1930s, substantial improvements were constantly made in both radio receivers and disc-cutters, and it would have been prohibitively costly for small recording operations to keep pace with each improvement. It is impossible to know which type of radio receiver was used, but I suspect that it was not one of the expensive sets implementing the latest advances in radio reception. I also sense that the disc-cutting equipment used was not of the latest vintage, hence the lack of high frequency information and the intrusive distortion as each side approached the final two minutes of recording time.
This set of discs was rescued by collector Eugene Pollioni from the basement of deceased collector Robert Fazzio, who for many years had provided source material to the LP producer Edward J. Smith. Given the connection between Smith and Fazzio, it is perplexing that this recording did not find its way to release on Smith’s EJS label. Gene Pollioni brought the discs to me in 2006, and I was elated to have the opportunity of making digital transfers. Despite the lack of high frequencies, I was encouraged. I made multiple transfers of each side, before and after careful cleaning, playing them wet and dry, and using Stanton and Shure cartridges with a wide selection of styli. As I listened to my work, however, I felt increasing frustration with the challenges of restoring the recording, and I decided to put the project aside. In recent years, the availability of new software programs enabling the removal of undesirable noises without deleting musical content has revived my hope of making this recording suitable for a Marston CD release. Many hours were poured into removing transient bursts of radio static while attempting by experimentation to make the music as listenable as possible. The sonic improvement of the discs was definitely enhanced by using different styli for the outside, middle, and inside of each disc. I must acknowledge the skill and patience of Rich Harris, who has been a tremendous help to me in this endeavor. I should also mention that a short passage at the end of the Good Friday Music was missed at a side-change by the original recorder. This lacuna has been supplied from the aforementioned poorer-quality source. One hears some sonic degradation at this point, but now, all of the music is present. Unfortunately, the short section afflicted by Morse code was not correctable.
It is Marston’s hope that this issue, with the essay by Jeffery McMillan and previously unseen photos, will take an important place in the history of Parsifal recordings.