No sooner has de Billy walked out of the Vienna State Opera in a dispute about cuts in Lohengrin than his first recording of the work is released, the latest in Frankfurt’s in-house live recording of what looks like becoming a genuinely complete Wagner cycle. As we learned from the Barcelona Ring DVDs (Opus Arte) the French conductor is a practical, uneccentric Wagnerian who knows how to build and pace an effective performance. What stand out especially here are balances between stage and pit and chorus and the soloists which allow an exceptional amount of detail through in sometimes congested-sounding passages in the outer-act finales. Credit also naturally to the recording for this.

As per normal at this address, the casting is intelligent and original. Nylund is a weightier than is often heard today (cf Kringelborn, Dasch) but clear-as-a-bell Elsa, an instant tonal colour contrast to Schuster’s Ortrud, who could be described as less heavy (and certainly less blustery) than might be expected. Hayward is a rather grand, noble Telramund, a credible-sounding regent’s guardian rather than a neurotic proto-Macbeth wreck. König, in exceptionally fresh voice for the final scene, is a fluent young knight rather than a pretty-sounding mystic, whose distress at Elsa’s fatal curiosity is audibly realised. Together with Falk Struckmann’s man-of-the-people King Henry, they make up a fresh-sounding look at a work whose casting can become rather identikit similar. It is this aspect – and Matthias Köhler’s chorus, exceptional in projection, colour and accuracy – which gives this new release its distinguishing feature.

If this were the only recording the opera would be well served but competition is fierce at the moment. If you are not fussy about state-of-the-art sound, last year’s Orfeo resurrection of a fevered live Karl Böhm performance from 1960s Vienna remains essential, not least for the husband/wife pairing of Walter Berry and Christa Ludwig as the baddies. The Warner Barenboim is absolutely complete, including the officially cut second verse of the Grail Narration. Kempe’s EMI set and Sawallisch’s Bayreuth one (now Decca) are reliable library versions. Try to hear Erich Kleiber’s Danish excerpts and Furtwängler’s pre-war Act 3 for the conducting.