Playwright Allen Leicht tries to attend all the performances of his play “My Parsifal Conductor: A Wagnerian Comedy,” playing at the Marjorie Deane Little Theater on West 64th Street in Manhattan through November 3. The only performances he has to forego are the Friday and Saturday night performances and the Saturday matinee, as he is a practicing Orthodox Jew.

Currently living in Riverdale, Leicht has lived for periods in virtually every borough in New York City from his earliest years in the Bronx. For elementary school, he attended Salanter Yeshiva, the forerunner of SAR Academy, but his family practice was only traditional. He attended Adelphi University in Garden City, Long Island, after which he began to pursue a career as a writer for TV and movies. His eventual move to the West Side of Manhattan brought him to Lincoln Square Synagogue. His initial friendship with Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald, which has lasted until today, was transformative and led him and his family to adopt an Orthodox lifestyle.

A serious fan of opera since his youth, as was his father, Leicht attended many operas including those by German composer Richard Wagner. Despite Wagner’s reputation as an anti-Semite, Leicht discovered that Wagner was a close friend and colleague of Hermann Levi, a German-Jewish conductor who traced his Jewish lineage back to 12 generations of rabbis. From an essay by Peter Gay, a Jewish-American scholar who wrote about the greatest minds of the 20th century, Leicht learned that despite his impressive rabbinical roots, Levi displayed disloyalty to his people by siding with the Wagnerians and even conducting Wagner’s often anti-Semitic works, including his final magnum opus Parsifal.

The story of Hermann Levi had been percolating within Leicht for many years when finally he sat down to write the play “My Parsifal Conductor: A Wagnerian comedy” seven years ago. After completion, it took five more years until producer Ted Snowdon brought it to the stage. The result is a full production but low-budget play. There is only one backdrop to the play, but its creativity allows for changes of character and mood. The actors, who were selected from over 600 who auditioned, are all members of Actors Equity and are compensated minimally. However, they all deliver stellar portrayals of their quirky characters.

“My Parsifal Conductor” portrays the dying days of Cosima Wagner, wife of Richard Wagner, as she tries to convince the angels guarding the entrance to heaven that she deserves to be admitted to heaven despite some of her less-than-admirable lifetime activities. We learn of her conversion from Catholicism to Lutheranism to be more appealing to Wagner, her out-of-wedlock children, and her deep-rooted anti-Semitism. In trying to appeal to the angels, she calls upon her collaboration with Hermann Levi after the death of her husband to perpetuate the European Music Festival that Wagner had established in Venice. She tries to convince Levi to bear witness on her behalf before the ministering angels that she was indeed his “friend” despite his Jewishness.

Throughout the play we hear barbs and insults against Jews, some even humorous, as when Cosima envisions the new music festival to allow seating next to Jews and to serve gefilte fish at intermission. There are several comic scenes in which Wagner attempts to “baptize” his Jewish conductor with bottled water or a gold cross that he was gifted by Moses Mendelssohn. In speaking with Leicht, it became clear that the Wagners had many Jewish friends whom they liked as individuals but not as an aggregate group. Leicht explained, “The Wagners were anti-Semites as was common in 19th-century high German society, but they were not Nazis or followers of Hitlerian diatribe.”

The play was very-well-received by theater critics and audiences, which grew throughout the run. Leicht is not yet sure where “My Parsifal Conductor” will go from New York City. But Leicht, a multiple Emmy awardee and creator of television movies, comedy series and daytime dramas, as well as director and actor, has many options.

Married to actress Renee Lippin and father of three, grandfather of two, the Leichts spend their time between New York and Israel, to which they made aliyah eight years ago.

By Pearl Markovitz

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