The titular hero of Wagner’s final music drama has long been one of Jonas Kaufmann’s signature roles – he sang it in Australia, for example, back in 2017.

This live recording was captured during a run at the Vienna State Opera in 2021, and very good it is too, bar caveats, more of which anon.

Suffice it to say, Kaufmann and fellow soloists Elina Garanča and Ludovic Tézier offer some of the finest Wagner singing around right now.

Parsifal, which premiered in 1882, the year before the composer died, is a complex mix of Christian and Buddhist thought, Feuerbachian philosophy and high-German mythology. With typically Wagnerian themes of sin, guilt, punishment and redemption, there’s plenty to get you head around, but fortunately the drama moves at a leisurely pace over four hours with lengthy opportunities to pause for thought. It should never feel long, however, setting conductors the challenge of keeping the drama on the boil while exploring the prevailing mood of religious debate, worship and ritual.

Herein lies this set’s drawback....