Entente Cordiale: Paul du Quenoy appraises the first postwar ‘Parsifal’ in Paris

Review of Parsifal, conducted Leitner, Opéra Garnier, Paris, 1954 (Profil, 4 CDs).

July 2011, Volume 5, Number 2, 95–6.

This remastered live recording of Parsifal from the Paris Opéra, made in March 1954, marked a historic occasion: it was the first performance of Wagner’s most spiritual work in the French capital since the end of the Second World War. Surprisingly, Wagner had ceased to be controversial in France by then. French orchestras played his music during the war, not only under the German occupation but even in the politically and militarily charged period between the Liberation and cessation of hostilities.