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The head of John the Baptist enters dimly into Wagner's drama in the conceit that Kundry is a reincarnation of Herodias, who is doomed to make atonement, not for having danced the head off the prophet's shoulders, but for having reviled Christ as he was staggering up Calvary under the load of the cross. But this is pursuing speculations into regions that are shadowy and vague.
Kundry takes from her bosom a golden phial, and, having poured ointment on his feet, dries them, in the custom of the day when she was Herodias, with her long hair; by this repetition of a famous act intending perhaps to signify that she is a sinner and that he has raised her from sin.
There he is saluted by troops of lovely maidens, who play around him until dismissed by a voice sounding from a network of flowers hard by. Parsifal turns and sees Kundry, now a woman of exquisite loveliness, advancing towards him. She tells him of his dead mother, and drawing him towards her, presses upon his lips the first kiss of love.
It is true that Kundry no longer wears an early Victorian ball dress with "ruchings," and that Fresh has been provided with a quaintly modish copy of the flowered gown of Spring in Botticelli's famous picture; but the mailclad Brynhild still climbs the mountains with her legs carefully hidden in a long white skirt, and looks so exactly like Mrs.
These choruses are, you know, divided into three parts. The chorus of the knights is ordinary enough, the chorus of the young men I like better, but I can only give my unqualified admiration to the chorus of the children. Again, the chorus of the young girls in the second act is merely beautiful writing, and there is no real inspiration until we get to the great duet between Kundry and Parsifal.
The character of Kundry has many aspects, exhibited here and there by a flash, but, when all is said, and before all else, what we are watching is an upward-struggling human soul, whose storm-beaten progress could never move us as it does did we not feel in her simply our sister. We saw her, forspent, crawl into the thicket to sleep.
Once more a sacred glow illumines the Grail, and while Parsifal gently waves the mystic cup from side to side, in token of benediction alike to the pardoned Amfortas and the ransomed Kundry, a snowy dove flies down from above, and hovers over his anointed head.
Kundry during this, on her knees, has been bathing the pilgrim's feet. He watches her, at her devoted lowly task, in wonder: "You have washed my feet," he speaks; "let now the friend pour water on my head!" Gurnemanz obeys, besprinkling him with a baptismal intention.
His only difficulties were with the singer. She was the blue lady of the Townhalle concert. She was famous through Germany: the domestic creature sang Bruennhilde Kundry at Dresden and Bayreuth with undoubted lung-power.
Gurnemanz, a faithful warder, talks with sundry squires, not yet fully degraded to the order of knighthood, and tells them how through a certain wondrous woman Amfortas fell from his high estate. The wondrous woman, Kundry, disguised as a sort of Indian squaw, enters, coming, she says, from far lands; exhausted, she flings herself in a thicket to sleep sleep she says.
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