Christian Thielemann conducts Wagner’s letzte Karte like a psychological thriller.He revels in the broken fragments of arioso and recitative (so influential on the beginning of Mahler’s Ninth and Sibelius’s Fourth) with which, in Act 1, the composer depicts the struggles of Gurnemanz and the Squires to come to terms with Amfortas’s humiliating loss of face and Klingsor’s theft of the holy spear. His tempi range from a Boulez-like swiftness for the knights’ ‘Zum letzten Liebesmahle’ and the tricky, march-like celebration of communion, to finely sustained stillness for sections of Amfortas’s lament ‘Wehvolles Erbe’ and Gurnemanz’s ‘Das ist Karefreitagzauber, Herr’. All are related to the words and mood of the drama with the acuity of a Kempe or Furtwängler. Pauses are important too – the one after Kundry’s confession about mocking Christ lasts for ever but is seamlessly integrated into the act as a whole. At one and the same time this is a beautiful Parsifal (but never for its own sake, like Karajan’s on DG, 10/84, or RCA, 8/99), a modern Parsifal (surprisingly more so than Boulez’s, DG, 9/92) and a new look at Parsifal, informed by Thielemann’s experience and knowledge of a great tradition.

It has to be said that neither of the new set’s most bankable stars – Domingo and Waltraud Meier – are in their primest vocal condition, and both sound understandably mature. The German language can still sound effortful from this tenor, although his commitment to the role is undiminished and his understanding of the text is superior to earlier recordings under Levine (DG, on CD, 11/94, and DVD, 11/94R). The high-ranging vocal landscape of Kundry’s final attack on Parsifal in Act 2 pushes Meier to the limit, but her phrasing and characterisation are now of almost Hotter-like perception. Her use of different voices to catch the stages of Kundry’s attempted seduction of Parsifal in Act 2 is imaginative and distinctive too. In short, you will find these roles literally better sung elsewhere (and the achievements of Wolfgang Windgassen and Martha Mödl for Knappertsbusch – Naxos, 8/93R – cast a long shadow), but Domingo and Meier, offering other subtleties, come through well.

Elsewhere among the principals comes a similarly intense musico-dramatic understanding. Selig is a youngish Gurnemanz, more the narrator/evangelist than the old warrior (although his frustration at Parsifal’s not knowing anything is quite ferocious), who phrases with rare beauty. Struckmann is on something of the form he showed on Opus Arte’s Barcelona DVD of Walküre, singing strongly, riding the emotions clearly, lacking only that special neurotic bite that Fischer-Dieskau (for Solti on Decca, 9/86, or Knappertsbusch, various) brought to Amfortas’s impotence. Bankl’s Klingsor, rather like Meier, employs a wide set of vocal colours to map this dark lord’s frustrations. The various Viennese choirs, Squires, Knights and Flower Maidens (‘Komm, holder Knabe’ is ravishingly floated and phrased) contribute strongly.

It’s easy to take the high standards of orchestral work in recordings from this opera company as read; here the VPO are attentive and flexible to every novel requirement, the winds (a crucial part of Thielemann’s sound world for this opera) a colourful and seductive joy. The ‘live’ recording does the dynamic range of the interpretation and the various unseen effects proud. This new set is both a major release and (if we have to see it in these terms) an equal contender with Knappertsbusch, Barenboim (Teldec, 10/91) and the lengthy pre-war extracts conducted by Karl Muck (Naxos, 11/99) which, perhaps, it most closely recalls.