Even more remarkable than the almost 25-minute standing ovation that all but raised the roof at the Royal Albert Hall at the end of Götterdämmerung last night was the 15 seconds of total silence that preceded it. After the Rhine, restored of its Ring, subsided and the Staatskapelle Berlin played the final notes of Wagner’s tetralogy, Daniel Barenboim held his baton aloft and there was no movement or sound from a 6,000-odd rapt audience. When he finally let his hands drop the place erupted – and when Nina Stemme came on to take Brünnhilde’s bow the noise almost rivalled the indescribable sound wall I first experienced one year ago when Mo Farah powered down the straight to win the 10,000 metres gold on Team GB’s Super Saturday at the Olympic Stadium.

Barenboim himself was moved to thank his ‘wonderful orchestra’, the Royal Opera Chorus and his soloists and to praise ‘the communion between you [the audience] and us… You have brought so much silence, you listened so quiet and so wonderfully.’

So there can be no denying that Barenboim presided over a quasi-religious Proms experience. The prominence given to a fine orchestra was exceptional – the orchestral ‘interludes’ were anything but and where would you find no fewer than six harps in an opera house pit? The Staatskapelle Berlin made an undeniably wonderful sound and Renato Balsadonna’s Royal Opera Chorus again showed what a splendid outfit it is. There was some stunning singing, too, from a stellar cast… None of which means that this genre-bending is the way we should be being encouraged to experience opera.

I was dubious when I first saw this year’s Proms prospectus: the 75 proms at the Royal Albert Hall included no fewer than nine operas (concert performances, with a semi-staged Billy Budd from Glyndebourne). No Verdis (he’s been the poor relation in this bicentenary year), but Tippett, Britten and seven Wagners, including the Ring. This is overkill. The Proms is a fabulous annual music fest in a concert hall.

Operas are written to be heard and seen in the opera house: the staged drama is an integral part of the experience – and that applies to the fullest extent when you are thinking of the Ring, witness Wagner’s own elaborate stage directions let alone the probably infinite number of ways the works are interpreted and reinterpreted. Read AJ Goldmann’s appetite-whetting preview of Bayreuth’s controversial new Ring. However exciting it may have been for the Proms audience to hear such a glorious exposition of Wagner’s orchestral writing, what was lost, for me, was the staging, the action… and an appropriate balance between orchestra and singers. Yes, there were enough Vassals in the Royal Opera Chorus to gell with the hall-filling orchestral colour and the result was genuinely thrilling, but fabulous soloists were often set an unreasonable challenge. However much they rose to it – and, yes, the Immolation justified its reception – orchestral prominence comes at a price: even Stemme was sometimes struggling to rise above the orchestra.

How best to experience opera is an interesting question – CDs provide a wonderful tutorial, but take the opera out of the opera house and crucial elements have been removed from the mix. Nothing can replace an effective full staging of the Ring – 25-minute standing ovation notwithstanding.