No surprise: the greatest musical experience of my life was Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1962. I thought at the time that I would never again be so moved by a performance of anything. I have kept an open mind ever since, and still it takes me no time or effort to answer the question. Obviously I can’t discuss here why I regard Parsifal as a supreme work, but even if I thought that Wagner had written greater ones, or that some other master composer had — in fact, I do think there are several works by four composers that are as great as Parsifal, though at that altitude rankings and comparisons become absurd — what I experienced in Bayreuth that year was unique and unpredictable.
One of the things that made the Bayreuth experience exceptional, which is wholly missing today, was the town itself. It was extremely provincial and charming at that time, without a university and lacking the hotels (that are actually conference centres) with which it is now swamped. When you booked tickets for the festival in the 1960s, you also booked accommodation, and a friend and I were allocated a room each in Tannhäuser Strasse 17, behind the Festspielhaus. Anja Silja, early in her career and with waist-long hair, was staying downstairs, and was shockingly informal in clothing and manner. There was an atmosphere, wholly missing nowadays, of friendliness and informality: in the intervals we walked into the area marked ‘Only for artists’ and queued with the performers for beer and sausages. None of that is an artistic experience, but it indicated what people had really come for, in a way that nothing now does.
We walked into the area marked ‘Only for artists’ and queued with the performers for beer and sausages
Anyway, it was the first performance of Parsifal that year.
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