A revival of Jay Scheib's 2023 production of Wagner's Parsifal opened at the Bayreuth festival, taking a bold, symbolism-heavy approach with big-screen film projections and gothic, blood-soaked imagery. Despite Parsifal's uniquely sacred status at Bayreuth, where Wagner's family long restricted performances elsewhere, the production drew only mild booing alongside enthusiastic applause for the cast, suggesting audiences were more won over by the singing than divided by the staging's provocations.

The staging replaces the grail with a glowing blue crystal and uses live camera closeups throughout, including an unflinching depiction of Amfortas's wound being treated in Act One and a lurid, corpse-strewn dungeon for Klingsor's flower maidens. Vocally, Miina-Liisa Värelä's Kundry and Andreas Schager's Parsifal led a strong cast that also included Georg Zeppenfeld, Vitalij Kowaljow, Jordan Shanahan and Michael Volle, though the Guardian's reviewer found conductor Pablo Heras-Casado's orchestra inconsistent, with shaky intonation offset by moments of rich orchestral detail. The production continues at the Bayreuth festival until 25 August 2026.