Editing Parsifal (section)

===Ban outside Bayreuth===
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[[File:Wagner - Parsifal, act I - Gurnemanz conducting Parsifal to Monsalvat - The Victrola book of the opera.jpg|thumb|upright=1.2|Scene design for the controversial 1903 production at the [[Metropolitan Opera]]: Gurnemanz leads Parsifal to Monsalvat (act 1)]]

For the first twenty years of its existence, the only staged performances of ''Parsifal'' took place in the [[Bayreuth Festspielhaus]], the venue for which Wagner conceived the work (except eight private performances for Ludwig II at Munich in 1884 and 1885). Wagner had two reasons for wanting to keep ''Parsifal'' exclusively for the Bayreuth stage. First, he wanted to prevent it from degenerating into 'mere amusement' for an opera-going public. Only at Bayreuth could his last work be presented in the way envisaged by him—a tradition maintained by his wife, Cosima, long after his death. Second, he thought that the opera would provide an income for his family after his death if Bayreuth had the monopoly on its performance.

The Bayreuth authorities allowed unstaged performances to take place in various countries after Wagner's death (London in 1884, New York City in 1886, and Amsterdam in 1894) but they maintained an embargo on stage performances outside Bayreuth. On 24 December 1903, after receiving a court ruling that performances in the United States could not be prevented by Bayreuth, the New York [[Metropolitan Opera]] staged the complete opera, using many Bayreuth-trained singers. Cosima barred anyone involved in the New York production from working at Bayreuth in future performances. Unauthorized stage performances were also undertaken in Amsterdam in 1905, 1906 and 1908. There was a performance in Buenos Aires, in the Teatro Coliseo, on June 20, 1913, under [[Gino Marinuzzi]].

Bayreuth lifted its monopoly on ''Parsifal'' on 1 January 1914 in the [[Teatro Comunale di Bologna]] in Bologna with [[Giuseppe Borgatti]]. Some opera houses began their performances at midnight between 31 December 1913 and 1 January.{{sfnp|Beckett|1981|pp=93–95}} The first authorized performance was staged at the [[Gran Teatre del Liceu]] in Barcelona: it began at 10:30pm Barcelona time, which was [[time zone|an hour behind Bayreuth]]. Such was the demand for ''Parsifal'' that it was presented in more than 50 European opera houses between 1 January and 1 August 1914.{{sfnp|Beckett|1981|p=94}}