A spear, a royal wound, the search for redemption, and a pure fool who is supposed to set the whole imbalance right. Actually, one could condense the plot into these few lines, but Richard Wagner composed an opera of about four and a half hours and referred to it as a "stage consecration festival play." The world premiere took place appropriately in the own festival house of Bayreuth.

What Wagner once declared as "music of the future" is today already a classic. Therefore, a trip to the Green Hill is not mandatory. You can also go to Essen. Director Roland Schwab, who staged "Tristan and Isolde" in Bayreuth in 2022, comes to the Aalto Music Theater, where General Music Director Andrea Sanguineti will musically prepare "Parsifal." Robert Watson sings the title role, Heiko Trinsinger the Amfortas, the king of the Grail knights.

Women do not actually play a major role in Richard Wagner's last opera "Parsifal", were it not for the one, special part: "Kundry lives an immeasurable life under ever-changing reincarnations, as a result of an ancient curse that condemns her […] to bring the suffering of love seduction over men in new forms," writes Wagner, calling her a "wonderfully world-demonic woman." Kundry must be at the service of Klingsor to seduce the Grail knights, and later also Parsifal, through her allure. Thomas Mann sees in her one of the "strongest, most poetically bold" stage figures in Wagner's overall cosmos.

Kundry is a femme fatale, her exorbitant scream one of the most famous in the entire history of opera. This delicate role is being taken on at the Aalto Theater in Essen by Bettina Ranch, who is based in Berlin: "I have always wanted to sing since I can remember. I told my parents that I would become a singer, and I sang every day, even when I was sick." As a child, she often went to the opera and found it "cool" how singers talked about their work. Since 2016, Ranch has been part of the ensemble in Essen. Now she takes on the surely most complex female Wagner role. General music director Andrea Sanguineti conducts the musical happenings.