I have faced a dilemma for many years: I love Jess Thomas and Gerhard Stolze, but I hate Herbert von Karajan. His slow passages always ooze like mud and his fast sections sound like cheap operetta with too much tinsel. For many years the only available recording of SIEGFRIED with Thomas and Stolze has been Karajan's. However, this Bayreuth 1969 performance features Thomas and Stolze, with Lorin Maazel conducting rather than Karajan. Thus, Karajan-haters like me can finally enjoy these two wonderful singers. Stolze is a genius actor who understood the role of Mime better than anyone else on record. Thomas is not loud, but his pitch and enunciation are gorgeous and lieder-lyric and his insight into the character is second to none. (He was a professor of psychology before he was a singer.)The secondary singers are all excellent; even Thomas Stewart sounds more interesting and intelligent in this performance than he usually manages to be. Long-time veterans Josef Greindl and Gustav Neidlinger, who have been Bayreuth mainstay performers since the early 1950s, have aged extremely well and show no sign of weakening or getting bored with their roles. Lorin Maazel's conducting is a pleasure--disciplined but expansive. I especially enjoyed the section in Act 2 where the two nibelungs quarrel over the treasure. Maazel takes this section more quickly than any other performance I have ever heard, placing fearsome demands on the singers' tongue-twisting abilities. Both of them--Stolze and Neidlinger--meet this demand with no problem. All in all, a fantastic performance which no one should miss.