Richard Wagner's Parsifal - this disastrous and evil opera - was written in Wagner's old age, under the influence of such a set of disagreeably immoral persons as has seldom if ever been gathered together in so small a town as Bayreuth. The whole drama consists in this: At Montsalvat there was a monastery, and the head became seriously ill because he had been seen with a lady. In the long-run he is saved by a young man — rightly called a "fool" — who cannot tolerate the sight of a woman. What it all means — the grotesque parody of the Last Supper, the death of the last woman in the world, the spear which has caused the Abbot's wound and then cures it — these are not matters to be entered into here. Some of the music is fine. Richard Wagner's legacy