Parsifal (WWV 111) is an opera or a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is loosely based on the 13th-century Middle High German epic poem Parzival of the Minnesänger Wolfram von Eschenbach, recounting the story of the Arthurian knight Parzival (Percival) and his quest for the Holy Grail. Wagner conceived the work in April 1857, but did not finish it until 25 years later. In composing it he took advantage of the particular acoustics of his newly built Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Parsifal was first produced at the second Bayreuth Festival in 1882. The Bayreuth Festival maintained a monopoly on Parsifal productions until 1903, when the opera was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Wagner described Parsifal not as an opera, but as (a festival play for the consecration of the stage). At Bayreuth a tradition has arisen that audiences do not applaud at the end of the first act. Wagner's spelling of Parsifal instead of the Parzival he had used up to 1877 is informed by one of the theories about the name Percival, according to which it is of Persian origin, Parsi (or Parseh) Fal meaning "pure (or poor) fool". Composition Wagner read von Eschenbach's poem Parzival while taking the waters at Marienbad in 1845. After encountering Arthur Schopenhauer's writings in 1854, Wagner became interested in Asian philosophies, especially Buddhism. Out of this interest came Die Sieger (The Victors, 1856), a sketch Wagner wrote for an opera based on a story from the life of Buddha. The themes which were later explored in Parsifal of self-renunciation, reincarnation, compassion, and even exclusive social groups (castes in , the Knights of the Grail in Parsifal) were first introduced in . According to his autobiography , Wagner conceived Parsifal on Good Friday morning, April 1857, in the (German: "Asylum"), the small cottage on Otto Wesendonck's estate in the Zürich suburb of Enge, which Wesendonck – a wealthy silk merchant and generous patron of the arts – had placed at Wagner's disposal, through the good offices of his wife Mathilde Wesendonck. The composer and his wife Minna had moved into the cottage on 28 April: However, as his second wife Cosima Wagner later reported on 22 April 1879, this account had been colored by a certain amount of poetic licence: The work may indeed have been conceived