Back in his schooldays, the strapping Montana native Brandon Jovanovich gave up a football scholarship in Bismarck, North Dakota, for a music scholarship in Flagstaff, Arizona. He just couldn’t take the cold. Nowadays, with more than 50 roles under his belt and still every inch the linebacker, Jovanovich reigns as one of the most sought-after dramatic tenors in the business. Though he hasn’t (yet?) assayed the full slate of Wagner heavies, Wagner is big in his life. His role debut as the white knight Lohengrin in San Francisco in 2012 was a sensation, spanning the ethereal and the heroic. In the meantime, he has added Lohengrin’s prequel Parsifal to his mix. Written three decades after Lohengrin, Parsifal concerns Lohengrin’s father, whom we meet as a callow stripling with a bow and arrow, taking down a swan. Two acts later, we wave goodbye to him as a redeemer of Christlike understanding. Acclaimed in Berlin and Vienna, Jovanovich’s holy fool now travels to San Francisco as if fulfilling an old promise. The three very different figures who set Parsifal on his path to enlightenment are powerfully cast. The bass Kwangchul Youn, veteran of Stephan Herheim’s landmark 2008 Bayreuth Parsifal, sings Gurnemanz, who knows all the old stories. The baritone Brian Mulligan is Amfortas, the wounded king of the sanctuary it is Parsifal’s destiny to relieve. Tania Ariane Baumgartner, finally, enacts the time-traveling Kundry, part Eve, part Magdalen, whose kiss jolts Parsifal to clairvoyance. On the podium, San Francisco Opera’s music director Eun Sun Kim proceeds with her exploration of the Wagner canon. Matthew Ozawa directs. —Matthew Gurewitsch

For information on streaming Parsifal, follow this link: https://www.sfopera.com/operas/parsifal/livestream/