It was 1966 when the fiery iconoclast Pierre Boulez, who had once suggested solving “the problem of opera” by blowing up all opera houses, came to Bayreuth to conduct Wagner’s Parsifal. “Famously, he conducted the quickest and least pompous Parsifal ever seen at Bayreuth. This year, he’s back [at Bayreuth] with Parsifal after a gap of 35 years… To conduct Parsifal as a slow, grandiose celebration of religiosity could all too easily turn into a proto-nationalist ritual, so it’s no wonder Boulez wanted to strip away these connotations.”