Before the opera begins:
At supper the night before the Crucifixion, Jesus drank wine from a cup. He told his disciples the wine was his blood and the bread they shared, his body. The next day, as he was dying on the cross, a soldier pierced his side with a spear. Blood flowed from the wound, and one of Jesus’ followers caught the blood in the same cup.
Long after, this cup—and this spear—were given into the keeping of Titurel, who built the Castle of the Holy Grail to house the relics and founded the Order of Grail Knights. The Grail Knights are virtuous heroes, drawn to the castle by the power of the grail. No one can find the castle by looking for it; you have to be called there. From the castle the knights are sent around the world to battle evil.
A sinner named Klingsor wanted to join the Grail Knights, and was refused; he even mutilated himself in a misguided attempt to achieve chastity, whereupon Titurel ridiculed him and had him banished. In revenge, Klingsor learned black magic and built his own castle nearby. In a garden of delights, he grows Flower Maidens, beautiful women he uses to seduce and corrupt the Grail Knights.
Grail Knights age but do not die, provided they look upon the Grail frequently, and eventually Titurel’s son Amfortas became the new Grail King. Amfortas attacked Klingsor’s castle with the sacred spear; but Kundry, one of Klingsor’s bewitching beauties, seduced him. Amfortas was lying with her when Klingsor took the spear and used it to pierce Amfortas’s side. Amfortas escaped; but Klingsor kept the spear. The wound refused to heal. Amfortas’ only comfort came when, in a dream, the following words appeared cut into the cup of the grail: “Await the Chosen One, an innocent fool made wise by compassion.”
ACT I
The opera begins as the Grail Knights prepare to bathe Amfortas, whose wound causes him chronic pain, in a lake near the Grail Castle. Amfortas tries a healing potion brought from Arabia by Kundry, messenger of the Grail Knights. She is a wild, nervous person who makes little sense when she talks and frightens the younger knights. But Gurnemanz, an older knight, urges them not to judge her; he points out that she may be living with them now in order to expiate crimes committed in some past life. The young knights keep asking the talkative Gurnemanz questions, and eventually he tells them the whole history of the Grail.
His story is interrupted when a swan falls to the ground, shot with an arrow. The Grail Knights, who eat neither animal nor plant but are instead sustained by the power of the Grail, are scandalized by this brutal murder, and insist the culprit be punished. The culprit turns out to be a foolish boy who has no idea who he is, where he came from, or why it’s wrong to hurt other creatures. Gurnemanz is chastising him when the boy’s profound stupidity reminds him of the prophecy. Hoping that this boy might be the innocent fool, the Chosen One, Gurnemanz takes him to the Grail Castle. There the boy watches Amfortas, reluctantly and in great pain, opens the Grail to sustain his father and his knights. But the boy has nothing to say when it’s over, so the disappointed Gurnemanz sends him away.
ACT II
Kundry, who fell into an enchanted sleep while talking with Gurnemanz and the boy during the first act, wakes to find herself in Klingsor’s castle, summoned by the wizard’s evil magic. Against her will Kundry must do his bidding, which is to seduce the ignorant boy the way she seduced Amfortas. Klingsor means to corrupt all the Grail Knights and rule the Grail himself.
The boy happens to come upon Klingsor’s castle, defeats Klingsor’s men (who are fallen Grail Knights) in a tremendous battle, and discovers the Flower Maidens. They are flirting with him when Kundry shoos them all away. She names the boy “Parsifal”, and begins telling him about his parents, his mother Herzeleide and his father Gamuret. Gamuret was killed in battle, she says, and Herzeleide raised Parsifal untaught in the ways of the world so he might never come to knowledge of men and their wars. But Parsifal broke his mother’s heart when he ran away after seeing knights for the first time, and she died of sorrow.
Suddenly remembering his mother, and conscious of her pain, Parsifal experiences compassion for the first time. Kundry offers him his mother’s loving greeting in a kiss—but he only feels the pain of Amfortas burning in his side. All becomes clear to Parsifal, and he resists Kundry’s further advances. In fury, she curses Parsifal to endless wandering and summons Klingsor. The wizard tries to hurt Parsifal with the sacred spear—but the boy takes the spear and uses it to dispell Klingsor’s magic.
ACT III
Long after, on Good Friday, Parsifal finally finds his way back to the Grail Kingdom. He finds Gurnemanz and Kundry in the forest; Gurnemanz baptizes Parsifal, and Parsifal baptizes Kundry. All three go to the Grail Castle for the funeral of Titurel, who died recently because Amfortas refused to open the Grail.
At the castle, the Grail Knights demand Amfortas perform the ritual, but he again refuses, begging them to kill him and put him out of his misery. “Take out your weapons and kill me!” he sings. When Parsifal arrives at the Grail Temple he touches Amfortas’s wound with the very spear that dealt it, and the wound is miraculously healed.