Tuesday 9th June at 7pm via Zoom

“How Wagner Developed his own Mythic Storyline”, Part 2 of the series with Dr Thomas Launius: “Listening to Parsifal: Contexts, Sources, and Open Questions”

In his last opera, Wagner created not simply an opera but a new myth — one that ever since has provoked rich and sometimes paradoxical interpretations. In this second session of Listening to Parsifal, we follow Wagner’s radical plot decisions step by step — what he cut, what he kept, what he inserted from other sources, and what he created from nothing — and ask what those decisions reveal about the dramatic and philosophical world he was deliberately constructing.

Dr Thomas Launius was born into a military family and spent his early years living in England, Germany, Japan, and the United States. He came of age in Louisiana, earning a degree in Physics from Louisiana State University alongside a minor in Vocal Performance. Trained as a tenor, he sang in university and regional opera productions for five years before turning to the academic study of story, symbol, and myth. He later earned a doctorate in Mythology and spent over three decades as a professional storyteller, speaker, and mentor working at the intersection of narrative, meaning, and human transformation.

In 2017, Thomas fulfilled a lifelong dream by relocating to Bavaria, not far from Munich. Since 2019, he has worked as a professional tour guide specialising in historically rich and mythologically resonant experiences throughout Munich, Salzburg, and especially Neuschwanstein Castle — the fairytale fortress built by King Ludwig II as a living tribute to Richard Wagner and his operas.

His encounter with Wagner through Neuschwanstein opened into a sustained scholarly engagement with Wagner’s work, and particularly with Parsifal. Applying the Historical-Critical Method — the rigorous interpretive framework developed by German biblical scholars and since extended across literary and cultural analysis — Thomas brings source criticism, redaction criticism, and social-historical analysis to bear on Wagner’s libretto, situating the opera within the full depth of its medieval sources, its 19th-century intellectual context, and its ongoing challenge to 21st-century audiences. His work draws on the mythological scholarship of Mircea Eliade, Paul Ricoeur, and C.G. Jung, among others, and is animated by the conviction that genuine critical understanding deepens rather than diminishes our encounter with great art.

Thomas is a member of the Munich Wagner Society — the München Wagner Verband, the second oldest Wagner Society in the world — and lectures to Wagner Societies internationally.

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