Patricia Petibon’s Lulu in Oliver Py and Pierre-André Weitz’s Geneva/Barcelona production is surely as complete and dangerous an assumption as any since Teresa Stratas’s for Boulez and Patrice Chéreau. The French soprano is in confident, fearless voice over the entire range of this killer part and paces herself with skill.

The production is set in a multi-level, neon-lit modern space which can be theatre, drawing room, strip club or seedy basement. Costumes retain elements of the circus as which the characters are first introduced. There is an almost constant display of sex on view but it never pulls focus in the wrong way. Like the legendary (and, madly, still unissued) TV film of Chéreau’s 1979 creation of the complete three-act version of the opera, Py’s staging is driven at thriller-like intensity. And he is good at the biggest problem Wedekind and Berg have set their interpreters: the precise limning of characters who often defy such pinning down and become vague archetypes. For Petibon’s Lulu this involves subtle alternation of keeping a marked distance from herself and the life around her, and showing great emotional hurt at how that life is exploiting her (including a pained understanding that her love for Ashley Holland’s Dr Schön/Jack the Ripper is never going to happen). Sometimes (as in the Act 2 monologue) she takes shelter on a raised placard marked ‘meine Seele’; at others she is almost completely naked or fighting off continuous attempts at physical coupling. Py has respected also the social levels of the piece. Schön and Alwa are relentlessly bourgeois (and Geschwitz aristocratic) alongside the alternative bohemian-ness of Lulu and a Schigolch (Franz Grundheber) who is less father than exploiting ex-client.

Boder treats the score quite romantically and likes to take time over important motifs (the Schön/Lulu attraction, for example) while remaining attentive to his singers’ dynamic needs. The orchestra has fire and spirit and evidently works hard in the difficult transformation passages. The Liceu’s warm acoustic records well but does not always assist in carrying the finest details of Berg’s scoring. François Roussillon’s filming maintains a fair balance between spectacle and close-up. Hugely recommended: more satisfying, and demanding, and with a fuller central performance, than any filmed Lulu to date, save that elusive Chéreau.