Andreas Schager, Bayreuther Festspielchor, Bayreuther Festspielorchester, Derek Welton, Elina Garanca, Georg Zeppenfeld, Jordan Shanahan, Pablo Heras-Casado, Tobias Kehrer - Wagner: Parsifal (2024) [Hi-Res]

The acclaimed new production of Wagner’s final opera “Parsifal” is “a musical godsend” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) 2023 Bayreuth Festival. The successful and exclusive, multiyear partnership between Deutsche Grammophon and the Bayreuth Festival continues: The Yellow Label is the exclusive audiovisual partner of the mythical Wagner festival, and what was started with the 2015 production of Tristan und Isolde will now see its latest installment, presenting 2023’s new production of Parsifal. For the first time within this cooperation, this recording will be available both as video (2 BluRay Video Set) and audio release (4 CD Set, Digital Album). Previous releases within this partnership include: Tristan und Isolde (2015), Parsifal (2016), Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (2017), the Grammy nominated Lohengrin (2018), Tannhäuser (2019), concert Wagner at Wahnfried (2020), Der fliegende Holländer (2021), and Götterdämmerung from the 2022 production of Der Ring des Nibelungen. Parsifal, the masterpiece which Wagner solely composed for Bayreuth’s Festspielhaus and which he wanted to be performed nowhere else, was presented in a celebrated new production on the green hill in 2023. Pablo Heras-Casado, who made his Bayreuth debut, was celebrated for his interpretation, as was his splendid cast featuring Andreas Schager, Elīna Garanča, Georg Zeppenfeld and Derek Welton. Stage Director Jay Scheib takes at his word an expression that Wagner used in a letter to King Ludwig II: He stages Parsifal as a “farewell to the world”, a work that faces up to the question of how hope can exist when life has long since ceased to be possible…The 4 CD set includes two booklets, one providing information about the work, its staging in Bayreuth 2023 and photos from the production, the other one including the complete German libretto with English translation.