Of all Richard Wagner’s operatic works, it is Parsifal that divides audiences most. As with the Ring, its ambiguity lends itself to multiple interpretations. The music has been praised and admired by the greatest of critics and musicians, including those who heard it when it was new: Mahler, Sibelius, Berg, Debussy, George Bernard Shaw. It is the text, drama, and characters, the overblown religiosity, ritual, the piousness and passivity of the hero and his denial of sex and sexuality that cause the problems. Indeed, the only character Debussy found sympathetic was Klingsor, the evil one in the piece who has castrated himself in order to achieve power by his immunity to sexual desire. Whatever Debussy thought of the text, however, the music captivated him, and musical references to Parsifal appear in Pelléas et Mélisande, which he composed after hearing the work of the Bayreuth master.