He saw the Grail Opera and died
George Powell in Bayreuth in 1882 – a new discovery
Ian Pegler
2.8.25
In March 2025 it was announced on their website that the Nanteos mansion hotel near Aberystwyth was to close. This Georgian mansion, once famous for its legendary association with the “Welsh Holy Grail” known as the Nanteos Cup, had been run as a hotel for a number of years. The current owner had invested millions in refurbishing the place to its former glory but at time of writing its future is uncertain.
The future of the Nanteos Cup is secure – it is on public display in the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth. Its association with the Holy Grail can only be traced to 1880 and the first storybook linking the Cup to the Grail only appeared in 1905.
Tales surrounding the “Holy Grail” of Nanteos have grown and one of the most popular stories concerns a lord of the manor from the Victorian era – George Powell. The story goes that the composer Richard Wagner had once visited Nanteos (the year 1855 is often suggested) and while he was there he was inspired by the sight of the Nanteos Cup to write his famous Grail opera, Parsifal. The story is untrue, however there was a connection.
George Powell of Nanteos, close friend of the poet Algernon Swinburne, was an avid fan of Wagner’s music. In 1876 Powell went to Bayreuth to see the premiere of the Ring Cycle but he also wrote to Swinburne to tell him that he had dined with Wagner and his wife Cosima:
“I must tell you by word of mouth all about this wonderful time, I am too nervously upset to write fully to anybody - even to you my most intimate friend - on the subject.”
It was excitement, clearly, that lead him to describe the encounter as a “wonderful time” but he was perhaps over-excited at the prospect of meeting his hero.
George Powell’s 1876 meeting with Wagner has been cited many times including a recently published work by Gerald Morgan, The Powells of Nanteos. This work focuses on the life of George Powell, his devotion to poetry, art and music, his travels and his meetings with famous composers and musicians.
Less well reported in the literature is George Powell’s visit to Bayreuth in 1882. Thanks to advances in technology I was able to find a piece from The Aberystwyth Observer entitled The Wagner Festival. This is a letter written to the newspaper by George Powell reporting on the events at the ongoing music festival. On Parsifal Powell informs us:
“It would be difficult to exaggerate the interest displayed in these performances of Richard Wagner's latest, and, in some respects, greatest, music-drama. The word Opera would entirely fail to convey a proper or adequate notion of this intimate union and blending of poetry, music, dramatic action, and the scenic art.”
Powell also recounts experiences from his previous visit to Bayreuth in 1876:
“To my personal knowledge, a gentleman did not hesitate to perform, in 1876, the by no means trifling voyage from New Zealand, in order to hear in this place the Nibelungen-Ring.”
He also gives a description of Bayreuth during the festival:
“Bayreuth, which is by no means so small a town as is generally imagined, is full to over-flowing of strangers of the most varied nationalities … Portraits of Richard Wagner, photographed, lithographed and engraved; busts and medallions, in plaster and bronze, throng the shop windows, often with such incongruous surroundings as cheese, butter, hats, boots and haberdashery. Cigar boxes are decorated with "Scenes from Parsifal," of wonderful and unimaginable design and colouring. A beverage, I know not of what compounded, bears the name of "Klingsor's magic draught," Klingsor being a magician, one of the characters in the drama. In fact, the place is pervaded through and through by Wagner and his works.”
The Nanteos Cup had been linked with the Holy Grail just two years earlier (1880) in a tourist leaflet called “Aberystwyth – What to see and how to see it”:
“Nanteos. - … At the mansion is kept the Tregaron Healing Cup which bears a resemblance to the mysterious Holy Grail described by Tennyson in his “Idyls [sic] of the King”. It is said to have been a chalice made from the wood of the Cross and to have come into the possession of the Nanteos family from the monks of Strata Florida Abbey.”
This of course had nothing to do with George Powell, instead the passage was written by a local journalist known as W. R. Hall. Subsequent editions make no mention of Wagner’s Parsifal either and the first Aberystwyth performance of any part of Parsifal did not occur until 1965.
Sadly just two months after the letter from George Powell appeared in the pages of the Aberystwyth Observer, he passed away at the young age of 40.
Ian Pegler is co-author of The Nanteos Grail – The Evolution of a Holy Relic with John Matthews and Fred Stedman-Jones, Amberley 2022.
References and further Reading:
The Uncollected Letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne, Terry L Meyers, Vol 2, pp.86-87.
The Powells of Nanteos, Gerald Morgan, Y Lolfa 2025.
The Aberystwyth Observer, August 12th 1882, Page 5, The Wagner Festival.
Link: https://newspapers.library.wales/view/3042803/3042808/56
Aberystwyth – What to see and how to see it, W. R. Hall, published annually from about 1879.
The Nanteos Grail – The Evolution of a Holy Relic, John Matthews, Ian Pegler and Fred Stedman-Jones, Amberley 2022.
