Even a frustrated ballerina lover from the 1861 Jockey Club that disrupted the premiere of Wagner’s new Paris Tannhäuser might point to an adequate sufficiency of dance, had this been the stage production on offer. Sasha Waltz – ‘stage direction and choreography’ – regularly introduces choreographed movement in all three acts. Although the costumes are updated to a kind of Hollywood-ised 1950s Europe, the staging feels like that of a 19th-century ‘grand’ opera where ensemble scenes were organised by a ballet master, stage manager or one of the soloists, and the principals were briefed but left largely free.

Only once, in the huge, repetitive and difficult ensemble that rounds off Act 2, does the presence of dancers, and movement representing stress, guilt then repentance, feel like a faute de mieux substitute for more dramaturgical intervention. Elsewhere the Venusberg scene (Paris version, although what follows is all Dresden), with the corps de ballet present and moving the whole time in a suspended eyeball moon of a set, is delightfully slinky and sexy (Prudenskaya’s Venus ditto). The Entry of the Guests in Act 2 is a watchable mix of dance and ballet-walking, while the staged Prelude to Act 3 is a stylised pilgrimage to Rome. Most striking of all (apologies for the spoiler) is the finale’s shoulder-high carry-on of Elisabeth’s body just as the Venusberg dancers are dragging away their own rejected goddess – an idea Wagner himself tried in Dresden but was talked out of.

Musically, here is work from the conductor and orchestra on the level of their 2013 London Proms Ring, Barenboim continuing to hold Wagner especially in focus, a step forwards in style and balance from his uneven 2001 studio recording (Warner Classics, 5/02, with the same Tannhäuser, Landgraf, chorus and orchestra). Following a Bacchanale not far short in propulsion of Toscanini’s fire, Barenboim finds tempi and balance in his accompaniments that never swamp this essentially 1840s scoring with excessive Romantic modern-instrument sonorities (compare Solti or Karajan). A well-chosen cast make much of the sympathetic acoustic of the Staatsoper’s temporary Schiller Theater home, with the ladies well contrasted (an Isolde-like Elisabeth, a Venus with good low notes), Peter Mattei’s finely enunciated Wolfram and Peter Seiffert encompassing the title-role’s difficulties with a constant eye on their dramatic import.

By virtue of its grand-opera presentation in movement and its musical achievements, this Berlin Tannhäuser deserves a clear place among current small-screen versions, an intriguing contrast to the more interpreted productions of David Alden (Munich/Zubin Mehta) and Götz Friedrich (Bayreuth/Colin Davis).