The first scene opens in a cool woodland glade near the castle of Monsalvat, where Gurnemanz, one of the knights, and two young esquires of the Grail are sleeping.  Their earnest converse is interrupted by Kundry, who flies in with a healing medicine for the wounded King, which she has brought from Arabia.  This strange woman is that Herodias who laughed at our Saviour upon the Cross, and thenceforth was condemned to wander through the world under a curse of laughter, praying only for the gift of tears to release her weary soul.  Klingsor has gained a magic power over her, and, to use the language of modern theosophy, can summon her astral shape at will to be the queen of his enchanted garden, leaving her body stark and lifeless; but when not in his power she serves the ministers of the Grail in a wild, petulant, yet not wholly unloving manner.  Gurnemanz tells the young esquires the story of the Grail, and together they repeat the prophecy which promises relief to their suffering King:—­

    Wise through pity,
    The sinless fool. 
    Look thou for him
    Whom I have chosen.

Their words are interrupted by loud cries from without, and several knights and esquires rush in, dragging with them Parsifal, who has slain one of the sacred swans with his bow and arrow.  Gurnemanz protects Parsifal from their violence, and seeing that the youth, who has lived all his life in the woods, is as innocent as a child, leads him up to the castle of the Grail, in the hope that he may turn out to be the sinless fool of the prophecy.  In the vast hall of the Grail the knights assemble, and fulfil the mystic rites of the love-feast.  Amfortas, the one sinner in that chaste community, pleads to be allowed to forgo his task of uncovering the Grail, the source to him of heartburning remorse and anguish; but Titurel, speaking from the tomb where he lies between life and death, sustained only by the miraculous power of the Grail, urges his son to the duty.  Amfortas uncovers the Grail, which is illumined with unearthly light, and the solemn ceremony closes in peace and brotherly love.  Parsifal, who has watched the whole scene from the side, feels a strange pang of sympathy at Amfortas’s passionate cry, but as yet he does not understand what it means.  He is not yet ’wise through pity,’ and Gurnemanz, disappointed, turns him from the temple door.

In the second act we are in Klingsor’s magic castle.  The sorcerer, knowing of the approach of Parsifal, summons Kundry to her task, and with many sighs she has to submit to her master.  Parsifal vanquishes the knights who guard the castle, and enters the enchanted garden, a wilderness of tropical flowers, vast in size and garish in colour.  There he is saluted by troops of lovely maidens, who play around him until dismissed by a voice sounding from a network of flowers hard by.  Parsifal turns and sees Kundry, now a woman of exquisite loveliness, advancing towards him.  She tells him of his dead mother, and drawing