The German regisseur Tobias Kratzer has found an interesting frame story through which to parallel and illustrate the dramatic conflicts of Wagner’s early Romantic opera. Venus’s ‘court’ is immediately introduced to us (on video) as a 20th-century hippie commune living on their wits (theft from a hamburger takeaway joint and violence included) from a van on the road. Its members comprise: Venus in a glittery pop-style jumpsuit; a drag artiste (Le Gateau Chocolat); Oskar, a drum-toting dwarf reminiscent of Günther Grass’s The Tin Drum; and, in full clown costume and make-up, Tannhäuser himself, at first a kind of willing hostage who jumps ship in protest at the running-down of a police officer. A young girl on a bicycle (aka A Young Shepherd) guides him into the increasingly familiar landscape of the Festspielhaus itself, whence the Pilgrims are shown arriving as if the audience for a performance. Later the contesting minstrel knights arrive in everyday clothes as if the performing artists, and even Elisabeth has a brief (uncanonical) appearance to reproach Tannhäuser for his absence from the Wartburg.

The double image of show-within-a-show is imaginatively sustained in Act 2 – at least on this filming – as Venus’s ‘court’ smuggle their way into the Hall of Song competition, providing a literal and often amusing (although rarely distracting) focus for Tannhäuser’s battle between sensual and pure love. We are also shown singers’ in-character emotions offstage in the wings and a cleverly blocked-out battle between the singer minstrels. Here Elisabeth plays a much stronger and emotionally clearer hand than usual in contrast to Venus’s reactions as a member of the competition audience. Maybe the arrival of the apparently real-life modern Bayreuth town police onstage to arrest Tannhäuser is a touch indulgent but it certainly pilots us through one of Wagner’s stodgier ensembles.

Act 3 is more extreme. I will limit my comments to ‘spoilers’ – the chorus Pilgrims shown as battered travellers, Elisabeth and Wolfram becoming lovers, Elisabeth’s apparent suicide, the final chorus of redemption entirely offstage and, in presumably a fantasy, video of Tannhäuser and Elisabeth as a couple on the road in the Venus van. Many questions asked but not necessarily answered – hopefully to be continued when the festival resumes in 2021.

The cast here play as a really tight company. The work’s habitual problems – the Dresden version of Act 1 is used, incidentally – are swept away by the authority and confidence of (especially) Gould in the title-role, Zhidkova’s Venus (almost unbelievably a late replacement) and the famous newcomer Davidsen (who acts and sings as if she’s already spent a life on this stage). Some controversy (and certainly a lot of booing, perhaps politically motivated) surrounded Gergiev’s festival debut. It was even announced that he would not return the following year but what we hear here is a tight, quite swift and light performance, wholly relating to the action presented. Hugely recommended, unless you’re irretrievably addicted to medieval recreation – and you’ll even get quite a lot of that here.