This best-known version of the Parsival myth, the opera by Richard Wagner, was first performed in 1882. It opens with a situation, the wounded Grail King at the castle of Monsalvat. The king, Amfortas, suffers from a spear wound in the side and no medicine can cure him. Amfortas sings that there is no help for him, but he has been promised he can be healed by an Innocent Fool. In rushes the sorceress Kundry, with a vial of balsam for the king.
Amfortas' knights scorn Kundry and mock her while Amfortas drinks the balsam (which does no good). She's trying to expiate her sins of the past, but her manners are rude and nobody likes her. Then there's a song, explaining the Grail's history. Amfortas' father Titurel was the first Grail King, having received the holy vessel while on crusade; hosts of angels brought him the Grail, which is the chalice from which Christ drank at the last supper, and also the Spear which pierced Christ's side as He hung on the cross. These treasures are now hidden at the Grail Castle, Monsalvat. Sinless knights, the Grail company, guard it, and they also ride forth into the world to fight for truth and virtue.
A wicked magician, Klingsor, wants the Grail for himself. Kundry used to be in his service as a sort of sorcerous Mata Hari; she and several other like maidens enticed various Grail knights into Klingsor's castle and corrupted them, but when Amfortas (now Grail King after Titurel) took the Spear and went to rescue them, Kundry tempted Amfortas into folly. Because of this, Klingsor was able to seize the Spear and wound Amfortas with it. Matters have been at a stalemate since then.
Only the knight who retrieves the Spear can banish the cloud which now hangs over the Grail Castle.
Enter Parsifal, a fool.
Kundry explains that Parsifal (who has been rushing about in the woods like a lunatic) was raised fatherless, with a mother who shielded him from all the harsh realities of the world. But perhaps he is the Innocent Fool who will save them all?
Then there's a lot of song and dance, the Grail appears, Amfortas falls down with his wound freshly torn open by his ecstacy at the sight of the Grail. Parsifal sits dumb through all this and is finally driven away from the company; exit Parsifal, cowering. The curtain falls.
In Klingsor's evil castle, the magician looks into a magic mirror and sees Parsifal approaching. He summons Kundry, tells her she is still his slave, and forces her to seduce Parsifal out of his destined path. And she tries - boy, does she try - but all Parsifal does is go blank and then press a hand to his side and cry, "Amfortas! The wound!" in sympathetic pain.
Kundry sings of the curse upon her: long ago, at the Crucifixion, she looked on Christ on the cross and laughed at his pain. Because of this, she is doomed to wander forever through the world, seeking salvation, but whenever she finds someone who might lift her curse, the fatal mocking laughter seizes her and dooms her again.
Parsifal sings that her kiss has awakened him to the knowledge of good and evil; he is no longer a fool, but a man.
Klingsor hurls the Spear at Parsifal, and Parsifal snatches it from mid-air and takes it for his own. Klingsor vanishes, defeated; the black castle also vanishes; Kundry is left, weeping. Exit Parsifal, end of act two.
Act three: seven years have passed and at the Grail Castle, everything has gone to pot. Amfortas is still wounded. Titurel, Amfortas' father, is dead. Because of Amfortas' infirmity, the Grail is hidden from all and the Grail knights, deprived of it, have forgotten their quest and wander around like animals. It is Good Friday. Enter Kundry, now healed; she wears the robe of a penitent, and is meek, chaste, and humble. Enter Parsifal, a knight all in black, bearing the Spear.
Parsifal sings that he is under a curse, and has roamed the earth for seven years seeking the Grail, fighting on every battlefield yet never once profaning the holy Spear by turning it to violence. Kundry anoints Parsifal and takes him into the castle. Mass is celebrated, Parsifal heals Amfortas with the Spear. Kundry sinks to the ground and dies as the Grail appears and celestial choirs proclaim the Eucharist. The curtain falls, the end.
In Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival - a much earlier version of the story, written circa 1200 AD, the Grail is a vessel brought down from Heaven to earth, and a community, the Grail community or elect, has gathered around it. Wolfram's Grail is sometimes a bowl (which gives its elect not only salvation, but all the food and drink they desire, along with health and eternal life) but also a stone, upon which magically appear all the names of those called to its company. So, the Philosopher's stone, and at the same time a sort of magic Round Table of the soul.
The Grail has two heralds on earth: Sigune, a hermitic maiden, who lives in a hut and sleeps every night on the sarcophagus of her beloved, a dead knight; he perished because she committed a sin of lust, and she herself eventually dies and is found stretched out on his coffin. The second herald is the Loathly Maiden, Kundry the sorceress. Kundry has been bringing Sigune a kind of care packet of Grail food every week, which kept Sigune alive. As for the Grail itself, its primary caretakers are twenty-five maidens of excellent purity, and at their head is one true maid, the most beautiful in the world. She alone can touch the Grail. Her name is Repanse de Schoye. Knowledge of Joy.
The knights of the Grail, meanwhile, in Wolfram's version are led by not one but two Fisher Kings. Both are wounded. Both are kept alive only by the Grail. Titurel is the eldest, and Wolfram describes him as suffering from podarga, ie gout, a disease brought about by overindulgence. Titurel has been literally crippled by this ailment.
Amfortas is Titurel's son, and Parsifal's uncle. (The inner company of the Grail is a family: Repanse de Schoye is Parsifal's aunt, Titurel is his great-grandfather, those who instruct him and bring him to the Grail castle are uncles, and so forth.) Amfortas, like Titurel, is crippled. He is introduced to Parsifal with this description, "Amor was his battle cry. But that cry is not quite appropriate for a spirit of humility," and his name comes from the Latin infirmitas and Old French enferte, meaning not only infirmity of the body (as in the modern English) but also moral infirmity; during the Middle Ages when Wolfram wrote, the word enferte was widely used to describe moral sickness, vice. Amfortas was wounded during jousting, with a lance through the testicles, but even before he became crippled he was still known as Amfortas, the infirm king. He has literally been castrated for sins of amor.
Parsifal, the foolish knight or myst coming among the company of the Grail, cannot enter into the mystery and become Grail King till he passes a test. This is a test of awareness, intellect, and mercy; all he has to do is, unprompted, look upon Amfortas the crippled Fisher King and ask the question, "Why are you wounded?" That is, he has to demonstrate compassion for the King. Naturally he fails; the unenlightened knight who raised him taught him such politesse that he never blurts out rude questions in public. Not till he gets past his issues of etiquette does he heal Amfortas and become Grail King.
Nor is that all, because Wolfram's story has not only two Fisher Kings, but also two mysts. The second is Feirefiz, Parsifal's half-brother and the king of an African country, Zazamanc. He is a symbol of lust, amor, and appears all fancy like a peacock, dressed from head to foot in fine gauds which lust-stricken maidens have given him. He too comes to the Grail castle, but he is a heathen and not only can't receive the Grail, but he can't even see it; he's blind to it, it's invisible. Even the food it gives, which the whole company dines on and enjoys, is invisible to Feirefiz and he can't eat a bite. He is eventually baptized, admitted to the Grail company, and marries the maiden Repanse de Schoye.
So . . . there are two tanist kings, two mysts. Titurel and Parsifal, the wise man and the fool, form one pair; Amfortas and Feirefiz, the two symbols of lust, form another. One myst ends his journey of enlightenment and becomes the Grail King. The second completes his own journey and wins the girl.