Richard Wagner intended Parsifal to be experienced by audiences at his festival theater in Bayreuth, but the work’s pilgrimage requirement did not deter American impresarios from programing music from it immediately after the 1882 premiere. The Metropolitan Opera’s 1903 stage production, the first attempted outside of Bayreuth, infuriated Wagner’s heirs but soon led to an expected and colorful period of American “Parsifalmania.” Utilizing early recordings and archival resources, this presentation will trace the explosion of American interest in Wagner’s final stage work from early exposure during the golden era of Wagnerian performance in New York until 1914 when the rest of Europe, no longer hindered by copyright concerns, joined in.

Jeffery McMillan

Jeffery S. McMillan is a writer, lecturer, and arts administrator. From 2000 to 2010 he was an Archivist for the Metropolitan Opera where he helped implement the MetOpera Database, an award-winning industry model for publicly accessible opera performance history. Now located in the Bay Area, Jeffery is Senior Communications Manager at San Francisco Opera. He is also a member of the board of directors of the Wagner Society of Northern California and editor of its journal, Leitmotive. His publications on opera and jazz have appeared in the New Grove Dictionary of American Music, Current Musicology, Opera News, The Record Collector, ARSC Journal, and San Francisco Opera Magazine. His 2008 book, Delightfulee: The Life and Music of Lee Morgan was voted “Best in the Industry: Books” by the readers of Jazz Times.