Parsifal at Salzburg Easter Festival

To hear Christian Thielemann conduct the Dresden Staatskapelle in Wagner’s ‘stage consecration play’, in Salzburg at Easter, proved a musical experience that could only deepen anybody’s love of this extraordinary opera. To see it was another matter, as it often is. But let us first praise the musicians who, guided by their conductor, gave it wings.

At six minutes under four hours (battle-hardened Wagnerians will appreciate the timings) this was not a long Parsifal. By the standards of, say, Reggie Goodall, whose celebrated recording four decades ago clocked in at nearer five hours than four, it was something of a gallop, though it never felt like that, even when Thielemann, who is not exactly Billy Whizz, launched the prelude with a propulsion that felt perhaps a shade too urgent.

There is time, and there is Wagner time. Thielemann did not dissolve its bonds, any more than Newton or Einstein could, but he did establish the repose that makes this opera seem like the still point of the turning world.