Mr. Laufenberg aptly commented in his interview that no character in Wagner says and knows so much, yet reveals so little of himself, as Gurnemanz, a veteran knight, respected by all. This production boasts the German bass Georg Zeppenfeld, whose voice carries natural heft and authority without a trace of huffiness or posturing. Trim and purposeful, wearing glasses and a simple cap, he exudes patience and understanding, even when exasperated by Parsifal’s denseness.

With his long, fair hair and physical restlessness, Mr. Vogt makes a baffled Parsifal, the young, rootless man who seems to chance upon the community. Is he the prophesied innocent who can redeem the knights by his experience of compassion? Or is he, as Gurnemanz at first concludes, just a fool? Mr. Vogt’s impressive voice is focused and penetrating, yet meltingly tender in soft, high-lying phrases.

For Act II, which takes place in Klingsor’s castle, the set transforms into a vaguely Islamic temple. The twisted Klingsor (the strong bass-baritone Gerd Grochowski), who once tried to be one of the knights, now hates them. But his ambivalence is suggested by the room full of crucifixes that he secretly maintains. His Flower Maidens do appear at first in black robes covering all but their faces. When Parsifal comes into their midst, and they remove those garments, they’re wearing cheesy-looking outfits, like storybook exotic Arabian dancers. Mr. Laufenberg may be inviting us to see the scene as a little ridiculous. Some devotees of Wagner’s score feel that the maidens’ waltzing music of seduction is, by intention, sickly sweet, an interpretation that comes through here.

In Act III, Parsifal, who has spent years wandering and lost, returns to the sanctuary of the knights, where his spiritual transformation is completed through the metaphoric act of baptism. Amfortas, now grown old and wrinkled, is asked to perform the grail ritual for his father, who has died. In this staging, the shaken ruler is turned to not just by his band of Christian knights, but also by Jews wearing prayer shawls and Muslims carrying prayer books.

Mr. Laufenberg skirts cliché with this idea. The scene could have come across like some banal moment of Wagnerian kumbaya. Yet, the choral writing here is a babble of desperate, clamoring voices, a quality enhanced by this powerful concept. The message, it seems, is that everyone is confounded by spiritual issues and that we’re all in this together. At the end, the knights, and all the people in the community, wander off into a misty distance as the houselights brighten, signaling that the audience, too, is part of this redemptive act.