Productions of Parsifal with no forest and no Grail temple are par for today’s course but can be particularly alienating on DVD. At least the director of this production manages effective use of his singing actors from time to time – as when Gurnemanz sinks to the ground to kiss the earth (or rather, the wooden platform) at the end of the Good Friday scene. The dying swan, so often a problem for directors, is also well carried off (literally) here. But all too often we are shown sparing gestures, like Kundry’s non-washing of Parsifal’s feet, in inappropriate close-up.

Metal screens appear behind the central platform – what looks like corrugated iron for the Grail temple, something shinier for Klingsor’s garden. There is also a wooden cross-shaped object, placed behind three lumps of pale rock which serve as altar in the Grail scenes, otherwise as seats. The grail itself appears, the unveiling effectively done, though the empty glass we are shown in close-up is rather lacking in mystical power. Nevertheless, the dramatic force of the production gains considerably from good handling of the chorus, and from a flowermaidens scene, without embarrassing balletics, that features a group of nude figures in addition to the six singers.

The recorded sound is good, the orchestra well placed in relation to the singers, even though the shots we’re given only show strings, timpani and, on one occasion, bassoons. The all-important brass and upper woodwind are invisible but fortunately not inaudible. Conductor Gabor Ötvös sets suitably flowing tempi but his occasional broadenings are over-emphatic and cause the singers some fleeting discomfort.

The singers are an able team, while conveying a certain air of routine in what, in most cases, are seasoned interpretations. As Kundry, the veteran Doris Soffel often pushes very hard, though to considerable effect for most of Act 2, and while Wolfgang Schöne looks rather too old for Amfortas, he doesn’t sound it. Richard Decker is a personable Parsifal, though rather too inclined to stand and deliver when more nuance and even understatement are called for. Matthias Hölle is the mellifluous Gurnemanz, less well focused in the upper register than on the 1989 Barenboim CDs but still an imposing presence. By no means a wash-out, then: but the field remains open for a visually satisfying Parsifal on DVD.