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Between opera and reality: the Barcelona Parsifal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 August 2008
Extract
At midnight on 31 December 1913 the low string melody of Parsifal's opening rose upwards in the Teatre Liceu, Barcelona. That year-turn marked the end of the copyright period within which performances of Parsifal outside Bayreuth were prohibited, and made Barcelona the first city in the convention-governed world to stage Parsifal legally. Of course, the timing was a marketing ploy, but for many it was also a gesture of outreach, of stretching beyond the mountainous boundary of the Iberian peninsula and of hoping to become a credible cultural and political power in northern Europe. Alas for Barcelona, Europe didn't notice.
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References
1 Beckett, Lucy, Parsifal, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge, 1981), 94,Google Scholar discusses the rush to perform Parsifal after the copyright had expired (Barcelona is not mentioned).
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