The best singing comes from Annette Dasch’s Elsa, although her vibrato occasionally verges on unsteadiness; Georg Zeppenfeld’s mellow but light King Henry, short on low resonance; and Samuel Youn’s Herald. Petra Lang’s Ortrud, rising from mezzo to dramatic soprano, sounds forced and sometimes squally, but splendidly venomous.

The production does not colour the characters’ interpretation of their music in a way to make specialist pleading necessary…The women are good and the conducting imaginative in its avoidance of bombast. The orchestral strings and Petra Lang conjure up an exciting last stand for Ortrud. There is much of a workable Lohengrin here.