New Zealand-born Simon O’Neill seems assured of a glittering future at a time when international demand for tenors able to cope with the heavier Wagner roles shows no signs of slackening. However, unlike the charismatic Canadian Lance Ryan, recently seen and heard as Siegfried on DVDs of the Valencia Ring cycle (Opus Arte, 6/10), O’Neill’s recording debut is this single studio-made CD of “scenes and arias”.

The inevitable downside of detaching chunks of Wagner from their proper contexts – and despite decent recorded sound – is loss of dramatic and emotional momentum. I would guess that the conductor, Pietari Inkinen, is not a veteran of many if any Wagner performances in the theatre. Tempi err on the side of caution: from Lohengrin’s “In fernem Land” to Parsifal’s “Nur eine Waffe taugt!” there is more deliberation than rapt intensity, and although (of the purely orchestral extracts) the Götterdämmerung Funeral Music is well shaped, Siegfried’s Rhine Journey seems to involve sleepwalking.

All credit to O’Neill for being able to make so much of this difficult assignment, and there is doughty support from Susan Bullock as Sieglinde and Kundry and Sir John Tomlinson as Hagen. With an abundance of natural ability, O’Neill needs more experience in the theatre, projecting and inflecting the German text in a less studied way. Acting Siegfried’s death scene after being on stage intermittently for several hours tends to ensure more dramatic conviction and vocalised vulnerability than we get in any studio recording. But in the more robust passages – Siegfried’s reactions to the sleeping Brünnhilde, Parsifal remembering Amfortas’s suffering – O’Neill’s authority and potential are unmistakable.