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. ...