It is in its final act that Covent Garden Royal Opera’s new production of Parsifal properly articulates Wagner’s vision of forgiveness and a society purged of its bad faith he history of art can contain few pieces as misunderstood as Richard Wagner’s last work. People used to have a good pray before seeing it, as if its sort-of enactment of the Eucharist were the real thing. Others have been repulsed – notably the historian Steven Runciman, who described it as a “disastrous and evil opera”. It was first performed in 1882, and provokes the same responses now.Wagner was asking for trouble. In his previous work he used myths as the basis for his intense contemplation of the contemporary world. This was all very well while he spun tales of Norse gods and T